Harry Hay quotes:

Ostracism means you don't exist at all. And that's a very difficult situation to live with. As gay people, we had been chasing ostracism by that point for probably 300 years. You just knew that you should have dropped into your black hole.

Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all. You may not think you are noticeable. But they know who you are. They know you're a degenerate, and they've never forgotten that.

I condemn the national gay press for its emphasis on consumerism.

Give yourself permission to enjoy being gay. You do have to give yourself permission. You have been told you may not. Give yourself permission to be free.

I was an older brother. So I had to do a lot of things first. My father was a self-made man, and he would beat me senseless. But he was a Scotsman, and stubborn. I'm his son, and I'm stubborn, too. I go on being stubborn.

The police had a practice of entrapping people. This was done all over the country, but we had a particularly vicious group here in Southern California because of the Hollywood situation. They knew they could get a lot of them. They were shaking down people for thousands in blackmail.

Underneath that facade, I'm a terrified little sissy, just like everybody else. But I never let it show.

Giving votes in exchange for ideological support. To wit: identity politics for homosexuals.

With the full realization that, in order to earn for ourselves any place in the sun, we must with perseverance and self-discipline work collectively for the full first-class citizenship participation of Minorities everywhere, including ourselves.

A law is a law. It can be voted in. It can be voted out. It can be voted in and stay in as long as you have the majority. And where do you have the majority? You kid yourself.

Confronted with the loving-sharing Consensus of subject-SUBJECT relationships all Authoritarianism must vanish. The Fairy Family Circle, co-joined in the shared vision of non-possessive love - which is the granting to any other and all others that total space wherein each may grow and soar to his own freely-selected, full potential - reaching out to one another subject-to-SUBJECT, becomes for the first time in history the true working model of a Sharing Consensus!

I knew that I was gay in every bone of my body. So I did the only thing I could do. I started the movement.

I was accustomed to walking alone. I'd find other people who agreed with me, but they also said, "I wouldn't dare mention it." I was the only one who would say, "We've got to stand." And they said, "Well, yes. And after you make it safe, then I'll stand, too. But you have to make it safe."

If you look into the history of fashion, you'll discover that Gernreich was the leading name for years and the leading fashion designer both here in the United States and internationally.

I'm not looking for a boyish girl. I'm looking for a boy. And I'm not looking for a girlish boy either.

I've always felt I carried a golden secret, a wonderful secret. Every time I thought about it, it made me feel warm inside and good.

Out of the mists of our long oppression, / We bring love for ourselves and each other, / And love for the gifts we bear, /So heavy and so painful the fashioning of them, /So long the road given us to travel them. A separate people, /We bring a gift to celebrate each other, /'Tis a gift to be gay! / Feel the pride of it!

The assimilationist movement is running us into the ground.

The moment you say, "We are proud. I'm proud to be this, and I'm proud to be that," what you're saying is we're almost as good as the others. "Almost" always means not quite.

Up until I was eleven years old, I thought I was the only one of my kind in the world. I couldn't find anybody else who felt as I did.

When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to....transform their pain into healings; ...transform their tears to laughter: ...transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness.

I always say to people, "If you share my dream, why don't we walk together?" And that's my only organizing tool.