June has officially hit our calendars, and you know what that means — it’s Pride Month! But before you hoist your rainbow flags, engage in a marathon of LGBTQ+ movies, and start digging into our list of Pride Month quotes for your celebratory Instagram posts, let’s take a moment to reflect on the immense weight of this month-long celebration.
Some may have forgotten or never really researched the history behind it, but Pride Month is more than just vibrant parades, a surge in sales of rainbow-themed merchandise, and an excuse to sport outrageously colorful outfits (though let’s admit it, that part is pretty cool). It’s a reminder of the LGBTQ+ activists who swapped fear for courage, prejudice for acceptance, and stood taller than their fiercest platform heels to shout out, “Here I am!”
The Stonewall Riots, often recognized as the first Pride, were a cry against systemic oppression that echoed far beyond the confines of the Stonewall Inn. Today, we stand on the shoulders of these pioneers who dared to question the status quo, turning their tears into a worldwide movement.
Every time you post or scroll through the many famous LGBTQ+ quotes you’ll see this month, spare a thought for the warriors behind them. Each equality quote encapsulates a piece of queer activism history, a moment to salute the tireless activists who fought — and continue to fight — for the radical yet so simple notion that we should be free to love who we love without fear. Let them not just pop up in your feeds but make their way into your understanding of what celebrating Pride Month truly represents. Let’s continue this legacy, one quote, one story, one achievement at a time. Happy Pride Month, y’all!
#1
“I believe that marriage isn’t between a man and a woman; but between love and love.” – Frank Ocean
#2
“You don’t have to be gay to be a supporter – you just have to be a human.” – Daniel Radcliffe
#3
“It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love, or how you love. It matters only that you love.” – John Lennon
#4
“Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put on some sunglasses, because we were born this way.” – Lady Gaga
#5
“This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another.”- Elliot Page
#6
“A long time ago I asked myself, ‘Do I want to be right, or do I want to be kind?’. I opted for kind.” ― Jane Lynch
#7
“I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.” – Dolly Parton
#8
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde
#9
“If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” —RuPaul
#10
“There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.” – Chris Colfer
#11
“The beauty of standing up for your rights is others see you standing and stand up as well.” – Cassandra Duffy
#12
“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?” – Ernest J. Gaines
#13
“We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.” – Lady Gaga
#14
“People will stare. Make it worth their while.” – Harry Winston
#15
“After a while, you learn to ignore the names people call you and just trust who you are.” – Shrek
#16
“Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.” – Coco Chanel
#17
“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” – Tennessee Williams
#18
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama
#19
“No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker
#20
“When we’re free to love anyone we choose, when this world’s big enough for all different views, when we all can worship from our own kind of pew – then, we shall be free.” – Garth Brooks
#21
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” – Audre Lorde
#22
“It still strikes me as strange that anyone could have any moral objection to someone else’s sexuality. It’s like telling someone else how to clean their house.” – River Phoenix
#23
“Gays are not interested in making other people gay… But homophobes are interested in making others homophobic.” – Stephen Fry
#24
“There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your own.” – Larry Kramer
#25
“Love doesn’t care how much money you have. It doesn’t care who your parents are. It doesn’t care if you’re gay, straight, or transgender.” – Rumer Willis
#26
“To be yourself is truly a revolutionary act, and I think more and more people should try it, because it’s gotten me a pretty cool life.” – Lena Waithe
#27
“I’ve been embraced by a new community. That’s what happens when you’re finally honest about who you are; you find others like you.” – Chaz Bono
#28
“To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.” – Bayard Rustin
#29
“If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work: ‘Hello. Can’t work today, still queer.’” —Robin Tyler
#30
“Cause shade never made anybody less gay.” — Taylor Swift
#31
“Being an ally can’t just be about nodding when someone says something we agree with – important as that is. It must also be about action. It’s our job to stand up for those who are not at the table when life-altering decisions are made.” – Kamala Harris
#32
“Never stop believing in yourself. You had it all along.” – Karamo Brown
#33
“We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.” – George Takei
#34
“You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.” – Gertrude Stein
#35
“Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.” – Boethieus
#36
“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.” – Dorothy Parker
#37
“We deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame, and without compromise.” – Elliot Page
#38
“Being gay is a natural normal beautiful variation on being human. Period. End of subject. Therefore, any argument which says differently is an immoral supremacist one. Call it out as such. Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving or unnatural for being just as you are.” – Larry Kramer
#39
“We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are.” – Sylvia Rivera
#40
“How can people change their minds about us if they don’t know who we are?” – Harvey Milk
#41
“We need to own that if you truly are taking stands against hate and oppression, you should not fund hate and oppression. Period.” – Gabrielle Union
#42
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
#43
“It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” – Emma Watson
#44
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” – Audre Lorde
#45
“It takes no compromise to give people their rights… it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.” – Harvey Milk
#46
“I think being gay is a blessing, and it’s something I am thankful for every single day.” – Anderson Cooper
#47
“If I wait for someone else to validate my existence, it will mean that I’m shortchanging myself.” – Zanele Muholi
#48
“Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start.” – Jason Collins
#49
“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” – Bayard Rustin
#50
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Stripey Guy Emerson
#51
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings
#52
“Self-love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. I trust myself to have my own back, so my allegiance is to the voice within.” – Glennon Doyle
#53
“We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.” – RuPaul
#54
“The whole issue of sexuality is so grey. I’m just trying to acknowledge that fluidity, that greyness, which has always existed. But maybe only now are we allowed to start talking about it.” – Kristen Stewart
#55
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.” – Jeanette Winterson
#56
“I fell out of the womb and landed in my mother’s high heels.” ― Leslie Jordan
#57
“The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you’ve just told them.” – Rachel Maddow
#58
“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.” – Michael Cunningham
#59
“We are powerful because we have survived.” – Audre Lorde
#60
“The more I’ve been able to learn about gay rights and equal pay and gender equity and racial inequality, the more that it all intersects. You can’t really pick it apart. It’s all intertwined.” – Megan Rapinoe
#61
“Obviously, no LGBT person should be denied the ability to be who they are because their boss disagrees.” – Gloria Steinem
#62
“This is why homophobia is a terrible evil: it disguises itself as concern while it is inherently hate.” – Tyler Oakley
#63
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde
#64
“Darling, I want my gay rights now.” – Marsha P. Johnson
#65
“We are all doing drag. Every single person on this planet is doing it.” – RuPaul
#66
“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.” – Tammy Baldwin
#67
“Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I’ve ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.” – Sir Ian McKellen
#68
“Being gay isn’t something you choose, but you do face choices about whether and how to discuss it.” – Pete Buttigieg
#69
“We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.” – Gore Vidal
#70
“Marriage is a language of love, equality, and inclusion.” – Evan Wolfson
#71
“For me, the transgender thing is the reality of my life. It’s the reality of my existence and it’s something that I’ve come to believe is beautiful about me.” ― Laverne Cox
#72
“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” ― James Baldwin
#73
“We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be, and we are what we love. That’s okay.” – Laverne Cox
#74
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” – Brené Brown
#75
“You know, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender – people are people.” – Judith Light
#76
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” – Orson Welles
#77
“If public figures came out of the closet, then the LGBT kids who saw them on TV would feel safe before they even knew why they felt dangerous. Maybe if enough people came out of the closet, gay kids would never feel dangerous. Maybe we could have a world where we could all just live. We may not all agree, but why can’t we just all live?” – Margaret Cho
#78
“It is revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen and visible in a world that tells us we should not exist.” – Laverne Cox
#79
“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
#80
“For a lot of my life, I was judged for my gender representation or my sexual orientation, or what people assumed of me; and every single time my goal has been to combat that and show my greatness.” – Taylor Small
#81
“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable. It happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” ― Marsha P. Johnson
#82
“We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.” – Kamala Harris
#83
“LGBT people are some of the bravest and most potent change agents and leaders I have encountered, and the most forceful defenders of the vulnerable and voiceless, because they know what it’s like to be there.” – Ronan Farrow
#84
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t ever apologize for your sexuality. Just be you.” – Sonya Deville
#85
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” – Allen Ginsberg
#86
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life. Define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein
#87
“Gender is not what people look like to other people; it is what we know ourselves to be. No one else should be able to tell you who you are; that’s for you to decide… Man and woman are two of many – stars in a constellation that do not compete but amplify one another’s shine.” – Alok Vaid-Menon
#88
“Never has it felt more important for me to tell stories of joy and abandon passion and recklessness. Life is short and difficult, people. We must take our pleasures where we can find them. Let us not become so cautious that we forget to live.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
#89
“I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, “Me, too.” ” – Jason Collins
#90
“Gender and sexuality are so fluid. It’s OK to change your mind a million times and figure out what works for you. It’s OK to take your time.” – Amanda Stenberg
#91
“Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.” – Barbara Gittings
#92
“There is no sexuality that is greater or lesser than another.” – Jasmine Guy
#93
“Gender is between your ears and not between your legs.” – Chaz Bono
#94
“I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.” – Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
#95
“I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act.” – Janet Mock
#96
“Gay, straight, bi, whatever – it doesn’t matter. Love is love.” – Amber Liu
#97
“Being transgender is not just a medical transition. It’s discovering who you are, living your live authentically, loving yourself, and spreading that love towards other people and accepting one another, no matter the difference.” – Jazz Jennings
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