Cleve Jones famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

To all my friends in Los Angeles: the Sultan of Brunei, owner of the Beverly Hills Hotel, has signed legislation calling for gay people to be stoned to death.
-- Cleve Jones

#Gay #People #Calling
I am not proud to be gay any more than I am proud to be right handed or to breathe oxygen.
-- Cleve Jones

#Gay #Oxygen #Proud
During those days when you're exhausted and during those days when you're frustrated, during those days when you're being attacked by your own people for doing what you think is right, remember you're part of a progression that goes back a long time of ordinary people who are doing their best to make it a better world.
-- Cleve Jones

#Thinking #Remember You #Remembers You
If you tell me I can't understand you because of my color or you can't understand me because of your sexual orientation or she can't understand us because of her faith, well, if you can't have empathy how will you ever have solidarity?
-- Cleve Jones

#Color #Empathy #Solidarity
A movement that seeks to advance only its own members is going to accomplish little
-- Cleve Jones

#Movement #Littles #Members
Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works.
-- Cleve Jones

#Writing #School #Direct Action
I believe we are entering into a period of political chaos. Out of that chaos is the potential for great evil, but there is also the possibility of great good.
-- Cleve Jones

#Believe #Evil #Political
I don't even want to go to the Pride marches anymore. The politics have been removed almost entirely. They're just huge corporate showcases.
-- Cleve Jones

#Pride #Want #March
Even today every year we lose an awful lot of young people, teenagers, who take their own lives because they're - they are gay or transgender.
-- Cleve Jones

#Teenager #Gay #Years
I think that a big part of the energy that was going into fighting AIDS was reduced when we saw that more of the new infections were among our black and brown young people. That's a sad truth to have to claim, but I believe it's true.
-- Cleve Jones

#Believe #Fighting #Thinking
If I had to say what my one greatest achievement is, it's that I lasted, and I'm still happy. I hope that comes through.
-- Cleve Jones

#Achievement #Stills #Greatest Achievement
I don't blame younger generations for their lack of awareness. Americans in general are not interested in history.
-- Cleve Jones

#Generations #Blame #Awareness
This is a terrible time to be young, I think. It's really hard.
-- Cleve Jones

#Thinking #Terrible Times #Young
There was no way to have a decent life and to be gay. So I was terrified that I was going to be caught, and I had already experienced quite a bit of bullying. And, you know, I just thought that only misery lay ahead, and that if I - when I got caught that would be the solution. I wish I could say that was a thing of the past. But, you know, it's not.
-- Cleve Jones

#Bullying #Gay #Past
I think support of the straight community is very important and I think there has been a profound shift in public opinion seen reflected in many ways. We do not need straight people to speak for us but we do want straight people to stand with us.
-- Cleve Jones

#Thinking #People #Profound
I am tired of fighting state by state, county by county, city by city, for fractions of equality. I am tired of compromises and I am tired of the strategy that divides us from each other. It is time for us to unite across state boundaries in a truly nationwide movement to win full, actual equality, which can only come from the federal government. That's not my opinion. That's a fact.
-- Cleve Jones

#Tired #Fighting #Winning
People who say that violence doesn't accomplish anything have not read history. I don't celebrate that reality, but there you have it.
-- Cleve Jones

#Reality #People #Violence
The majority of new infections in America are among young gay and bisexual men of color, and the full resources that could be brought to bear simply are not.
-- Cleve Jones

#Gay #Bisexual #Men
Hello! The world is a mess!
-- Cleve Jones

#World #Hello #Mess
I go back to the parallels with 1963, 1964 when white America really became aware of the brutality of segregation, the cruelty of the apartheid system which existed in the south. Then white people began to get on the freedom buses and travel to the south and be part of the voter registration drives and they... some of them were beaten and some of them were murdered but they stood with the African-American community and the civil rights movement. It's time for straight people to do that today and it is time for gay people to insist that they do that today.
-- Cleve Jones

#Gay #White #America
A whole lot of the way identity politics has gone seems to me to deny empathy.
-- Cleve Jones

#Identity Politics #Empathy #Gone
When you lose the gayborhoods, you lose the political power that comes when you're concentrated in precincts, and you also lose the cultural vitality.
-- Cleve Jones

#Political #Vitality #Political Power
I do believe that non-violent civil disobedience is a very important and useful tactic.
-- Cleve Jones

#Believe #Important #Tactics
If we [gays] want to be equal under the law, we must now - as the great heroes of the Civil Rights movement of 1963 and 1964 showed us - turn our attention to the federal government.
-- Cleve Jones

#Hero #Gay #Law
When I was saving pills to kill myself, I thought there was no hope. I thought my life was over because I was a homosexual.
-- Cleve Jones

#Pills #Saving #No Hope

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