Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey FiersteinRead
Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-definition and personal autonomy.
Harvey Fierstein urges individuals to take control of their own identities and narratives. Rather than allowing external influences, societal standards, or others' opinions to dictate who you are or what your life should be, it is vital to assert oneβs own values, beliefs, and goals in crafting a personal definition of life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about self-empowerment.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
CBS really wants me on TV. That's their aim. My aim is to have an all-gay sitcom someday, with heterosexuals as token guest stars. Let them be the next-door neighbors for a change.
Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.
Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.
I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance.
How often are the perpetrators of hate-crimes discovered to be self-loathing? Valued individuals do not strike out against strangers.
We deal five minutes with a person and their conversion and then we spend the next fifty years trying to disciple a goat into a sheep. I'm not saying this because I'm angry. I'm saying this because countless people are being deceived.
Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back; but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.
It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
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