79 Inspiring Lgbtq+ Pride Quotes

In a world that celebrates diversity, the LGBTQ+ community stands as a vibrant testament to courage, authenticity, and the relentless pursuit of equality and acceptance. Pride is not just an annual festivity; it's a powerful movement intertwined with history, emotion, and the unyielding voices that have paved the way for generations. Within this context, quotes hold a special power: they encapsulate experiences, inspire strength, and remind us of the progress still to be made. As we delve into this curated collection of 79 inspiring LGBTQ+ Pride quotes, let us appreciate the power of words to foster change, build community, and uplift the spirit of pride in all its multifaceted glory.

1. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” - C.S. Lewis

2. “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” - Jane Austen

3. “I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?” - Margaret Cho

4. “I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.” - Rudyard Kipling

5. “He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.” - William Shakespeare

6. “The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.” - William Hutton

7. “Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.” - Jon Foreman

8. “If you can cope the pride when winning,then you can confront despair when lose.” - Toba Beta

9. “For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.” - James Baldwin

10. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” - Dale Carnegie

11. “Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ” - Carl Gustav Jung

12. “I found out it is just as hard to make a movie that you are not proud of as it is to make one you love.” - Craig Ferguson

13. “By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.” - Erwin Schrödinger

14. “Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.” - E.M. Forster

15. “No matter what has happened, you're not a pig-boy; you're an Assistant Pig Keeper!” - Lloyd Alexander

16. “But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.” - J.K. Rowling

17. “Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature's unpredictable creatures.” - Achy Obejas

18. “Boys were so proud - you always had to let them think they were good at things.” - Diane Zahler

19. “Jennifer Merrick had stored all her tears inside her, and her pride and courage would never permit her to break down and shed them.” - Judith McNaught

20. “Your arrogance doesn't cheapen me.” - Toba Beta

21. “Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.” - Douglas Wilson

22. “One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

23. “O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.''Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”)” - A.E. Coppard

24. “Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

25. “If, when stung by slander or ill-nature, we wax proud and swell with anger, it is a proof that our gentleness and humility are unreal, and mere artificial show.” - Francis de Sales

26. “My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.” - Tana French

27. “One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.” - George Eliot

28. “We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.” - Elizabeth Goudge

29. “Arrogance is perhaps the most socially acceptable form of sin in the church today. In this culture of abundance, one of the only ways Satan can keep Christians neutralized is to wrap us up in pride. Conceit slips in like drafts of cold air in the winter. We don't see it, but outsiders can sense it.” - David Kinnaman

30. “This is stupid.""Look. You think how stupid people are most of the time. Old men drink. Women at a village fair. Boys throwing stones at birds. Life. The foolishness and the vanity, the selfishness and the waste. The pettiness, the silliness. You think in war it must be different. Must be better. With death around the corner, men united against hardship, the cunning of the enemy, people must think harder, faster, be...better. Be heroic.Only it's just the same. In fact do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it's worse. There aren't many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they'll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There's no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.” - Joe Abercrombie

31. “Pride is no respecter of persons. The serious thinkers may be humble, and the careless mystics may be arrogant.” - John Piper

32. “What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.” - Wallace Stegner

33. “The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.” - Jack Weatherford

34. “Being different is a revolving door in your life where secure people enter and insecure exit.” - Shannon L. Alder

35. “The ego lusts for satisfaction. It has a prideful ferocious appetite for its version of "truth". It is the most challenging aspect to conquer; the cause for most spiritual turmoil.” - T.F. Hodge

36. “I felt the same way the world felt about Kurtis; It revolved around him.” - Dee Remy

37. “Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.” - Criss Jami

38. “For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.” - Criss Jami

39. “And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.” - Leo Tolstoy

40. “Now then, Mr. Crab," said the zebra, "here are the people I told you about; and they know more than you do, who live in a pool, and more than I do, who live in a forest. For they have been travelers all over the world, and know every part of it.""There's more of the world than Oz," declared the crab, in a stubborn voice."That is true," said Dorothy; "but I used to live in Kansas, in the United States, and I've been to California and to Australia--and so has Uncle Henry.""For my part," added the Shaggy Man, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries.""And I," said the Wizard, "have been to Europe and Ireland.""So you see," continued the zebra, addressing the crab, "here are people of real consequence, who know what they are talking about.” - L. Frank Baum

41. “Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you.” - David Schwarzer

42. “Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.” - Robert Fulghum

43. “...women will show pride and honor about almost anything except love ...” - William Faulkner

44. “The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.” - Sophocles

45. “I had such a hard time giving all the glory to God when first accepting Him as Lord. Coming out of a theatre background where there were many applauds and accolades, I suffered from what I call "attention-itis" - the need for recognition. It took many years and much eating of crow before I became conscious of giving all praise to God for my accomplishments.” - Sheryl Young

46. “She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this? The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for every my blood flows with yours!'The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust.--"Wanda” - Ouida

47. “A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor’s banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed.” - David Wilkerson

48. “The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

49. “A lack of illusion is golden, and it is quite possible that creativity is the highest form of intelligence. One might further develop oneself in the creative sense and, therefore, at times, find some degree of shame more so than pride when having always followed that of the safe and ever-praised academia.” - Criss Jami

50. “The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” - Walter Scott

51. “For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.” - Ayn Rand

52. “For our face and body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt not pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straigth and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear with this being.” - Ayn Rand

53. “In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

54. “Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.” - Lauren Willig

55. “What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

56. “Some people would rather die in their pride, than live in their humility.” - Anthony Liccione

57. “If, in his pride, he considers God as a challenge, he will deny Him; and if God becomes man and therefore makes Himself vulnerable, he will crucify Him.” - Fulton J. Sheen

58. “Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.” - Charley Pride

59. “I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

60. “I thought of all the hardships and people that I had lost in the past few days alone, but, most of all, I thought of how I didn't regret any of it.” - Shannon A Thompson

61. “All this dread order break- for whom? for thee?Vile worm!- oh madness! pride! impiety!” - Alexander Pope

62. “Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.” - Henry Ward Beecher

63. “Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are rightTo warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—I hope that I shall never want to say!— that youHave reasoned badly. Yet there are other menWho can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.You are not in a position to know everythingThat people say or do, or what they feel:Your temper terrifies them—everyoneWill tell you only what you like to hear.” - Sophocles

64. “What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look foolish.” - David Wong

65. “What I love about being queer is... Everything. I like that it makes me different, and I like that it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. I like that it makes people ask me lots of questions about things they probably would not normally ask people about their relationships or lifestyles. And most of all I love being queer because i get to have a girlfriend.” - Tegan Quin

66. “The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education. It is no longer a world in which the souls of all are equal before heaven, but a world in which the mind of each is bent on achieving unequal advantage over the other. There begins to be a mere vanity in being educated whether it be self-educated or merely state-educated. Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars.” - G.K. Chesterton

67. “I remind you that I have no faith. If I sought God, I find myself.” - Henry de Montherlant

68. “Deception sneaks in through the window of pride.” - Evinda Lepins

69. “Love can either be your greatest companion or your worst enemy, depending on your pride to accept or deny things.” - Anthony Liccione

70. “There is something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Perhaps if the [the enemy] had brought a smaller army I might have had the sense to run. But he overdid it.” - Mark Lawrence

71. “Never mistake arrogance for intellect.” - D.B. Harrop

72. “Self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.” - Billy Graham

73. “I don't know why people are so shy about expressing openly in front of the world their longing for each other, the most powerful and tender natural attraction, but they pretend to be proud or indifferent and they don't consider, especially if they're young, that the sands of our life have been measured by God unto the last grain and that every carelessly wasted second of love sinks irreversibly into eternity.” - Angel Wagenstein

74. “Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin.” - Flannery O'Connor

75. “You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can't ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it's important, that it's not typing; it's writing.” - Roger Kahn

76. “It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.” - George Eliot

77. “Pride has traditionally been regarded as the foremost of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it has rather obviously been overtaken by Greed.” - James Carlos Blake

78. “It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.” - Katherine Mansfield

79. “He is not truly patient who will only suffer as far as seems right to him and from whom he pleases. The truly patient man considers not by whom he is tried, one above him, or by an equal, or by an inferior, whether by a good and holy man or by a perverse and unworthy, but from every creature. He gratefully accepts all from the hand of God and counts it gain.” - Thomas A. Kempis