Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milkwas an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth22 May 1930
CityWoodmere, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.
Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.
Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.
Lets make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neigborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living.
We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it.
Every gay person must come out.... Once they realize we are indeed their children, we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all.
I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power — it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope. You gotta give them hope.
Hope is never silent.
Let me have my tax money go for my protection and not for my prosecution. Let my tax money go for the protection of me. Protect my home, protect my streets, protect my car, protect my life, protect my property...worry about becoming a human being and not about how you can prevent others from enjoying their lives because of your own inability to adjust to life.
I like to sit in the window and watch the cute boys walk by.
If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities... the expression of love... then life itself loses its meaning.
It takes no compromise to give people their rights
I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you...And you...And you...Gotta give em hope.
I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they'll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects I hope that every professional gay will say 'enough', come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.