"I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history."
- Paula Gunn Allen

“You know, as an artist, it’s not my job to fit in; it’s not my job to belong. I’m not a social worker; I’m not a therapist. It’s my job to beat the s*** out of the world. I’m not here to make people feel good…So you’re always battling the basic human need to be loved and accepted. That’s always the conflict with the artistic need to challenge the world.”
-- Sherman Alexie

“My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don’t make that mistake yourself. Life’s too damn short.”
-- Armistead Maupin

“Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.”
-- Anna Quindlen

"What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise." -- Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

"You can hurt me. You can hate me, but do it because you know me, not because I’m a member of a group. Anyways, people aren’t grapes --- you can’t weigh them in a bunch, but I guess it’s easier than dealing with people as individuals. There, I’ve solved the riddle of prejudice: it saves time."
-- author, Rita Mae Brown

“The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.”-- Rita Mae Brown

“No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”
-- Rita Mae Brown

“I believe in not being put into ‘either/or’ -- instead, I choose ‘and.’"-- Mandy Carter, black lesbian social justice activist and co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, explaining that she doesn’t have one identity that trumps all her other identities

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”-- Euro-American anthropologist, Margaret Mead

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so we weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place."
-- Margaret Mead

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
-- Susan B. Anthony

(Was she lesbian? Well, the term hadn’t been coined at that point, but see this perspective: http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/anthony_sb.html)

“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It's a girl.’" -- Congresswoman (and 1972 presidential candidate) Shirley Chisholm

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” -- Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler
“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” -- Lois Wyse

“I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist.” -- Sally Kempton, attributed
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” -- Maya Angelou

“We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” -- Gloria Steinem

“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.” -- Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son

“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.”
-- Coretta Scott King

“Homophobia and transphobia pressure straight people to act unkindly or even cruelly towards GLBTQ people and encourage bullying and cruelty toward anyone whose appearance or behavior isn't sufficiently 'macho' or 'feminine' (from the viewpoint of the bully).”

-- Advocates for Youth’s 14 Ways Homophobia and Transphobia Affect Everyone (http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/lessonplans/activistally2.htm) adapted with permission of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network: http://www.gsanetwork.org/

“Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.” -- William E. Simon

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
-- John Quincy Adams

“Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.”
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
-- Louis L'Amour

“People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.”
-- Marian Wright Edelman