Sylvia Rivera is a name synonymous with resilience, activism, and the pursuit of equality. A pioneering figure in the LGBTQ+ movement, Rivera tirelessly fought for the rights of transgender people — especially trans people of color — and was instrumental in the Stonewall uprising in 1969.
Her passionate advocacy extended beyond the LGBTQ+ community, reaching out to those affected by poverty and racial discrimination, creating a legacy of fierce activism and compassionate outreach.
Known for her powerful speeches and candidness, Rivera’s words carry a lot of wisdom and raw emotion. They speak of the struggle for acceptance, the fight for rights, and the importance of unity and compassion in bringing about change.
Rivera died of liver cancer in February 2002 at the age of 50. The nonprofit organization, The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, continues her work to this day.
We’ve gathered some of the most profound and famous Sylvia Rivera quotes — encapsulating her audacity, spirit, and unwavering resolve.
These quotes, much like Sylvia herself, inspire a call to action, fostering courage and resilience in the face of adversity.
Whether you’re well-versed in the history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement or are just beginning to explore it, these quotes will offer powerful insights into the fight for equal rights through the enduring legacy of Sylvia Rivera.
Read on to experience the passion and wisdom of this trailblazing activist:
The Best Quotes from Sylvia Rivera
Famous Quotes
“Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned.”
— Sylvia Rivera
“We have to do it because we can no longer stay invisible. We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we are numerous. There are many of us out there.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist. I was proud to make the road and help change laws and whatnot. I was very proud of doing that and proud of what I’m still doing, no matter what it takes.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“Before gay rights, before the Stonewall, I was involved in the Black Liberation movement, the peace movement… I felt I had the time and I knew that I had to do something. My revolutionary blood was going back then. I was involved with that.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“We would sit there and ask, ‘Why do we suffer?’ As we got more involved into the movements, we said, ‘Why do we always got to take the brunt of this shit?’”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“I’m glad I was in the Stonewall riot. I remember when someone threw a Molotov cocktail, I thought: ‘My god, the revolution is here. The revolution is finally here!’”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“Remember that as you celebrate this whole month, of how you are liberated.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“I go by what I feel. What my spirits tell me, I’m following. Every time I went with what my spirits told me (except for two times, and both times I had to fight my way out of a situation), I was right.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I am tired of seeing my children — I call everybody including yous in this room, you are all my children. I am tired of seeing homeless transgender children, young, gay, youth children.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“You get tired of being just pushed around.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
Inspirational Quotes
“Before I die, I will see our community given the respect we deserve. I’ll be damned if I’m going to my grave without having the respect this community deserves. I want to go to wherever I go with that in my soul and peacefully say I’ve finally overcome.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“People now want to call me a lesbian because I’m with Julia, and I say, ‘No. I’m just me. I’m not a lesbian.’ I’m tired of being labeled. I don’t even like the label transgender. I’m tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that’s who I am.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I was wearing makeup in the fourth grade. I did it because I liked makeup, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
About Stonewall
“I guess there was tension in the air. It was a hot, muggy night, in the 80s or 90s, like when most riots happen. I don’t know how many other patrons in the bar were activists, but many of the people were involved in some struggle.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“He says he thought it was going to be a routine bust. That’s why they went in with only a few men. But to his surprise, we fought back. As he put it, ‘Those people would never give us any problem, because they had a lot to lose.’ So this night was different. This was the start of our talking back, speaking up for ourselves.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“Part of history forgets, that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. ‘Here’s your payoff, you pigs! You fucking pigs! Get out of our faces.’ This was started by the street queens of that era, which I was part of, Marsha P. Johnson, and many others that are not here. I’m lucky to be fifty in July, but I’m still here and I’ll be damned if I won’t see a hundred.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“People have also asked me, ‘Was it a pre-planned riot?’ because out of nowhere, Molotov cocktails showed up. I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians, but I always like to correct it. I threw the second one — I did not throw the first one!”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“We also have to remember one thing: that it was just not the gay community and the street queens that really escalated this riot — it was also the help of the many radical straight men and women that lived in the Village at that time, that knew the struggle of the gay community and the trans community. So the crowds did swell.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“I always believed that we would have a fight back. I just knew that we would fight back. I just didn’t know it would be that night.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“When the cops did finally get there, which was the reinforcements that finally got there forty-five minutes later, you had the chorus line of street queens kicking up their heels, singing their famous little anthem that to today still lives on that, ‘We are the Stonewall girls — the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees above our nelly knees, we show our pubic hairs’.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“The more that they beat us, the more we went back for. We were determined that evening that we were going to be a liberated, free community, which we did acquire that. Actually, I’ll change the ‘we.’ You have acquired your liberation, your freedom, from that night. Myself, I’ve got shit, just like I had back then… I will struggle ‘til the day I die and my main struggle right now is that my community will seek the rights that are justly ours.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“All of us were working for so many movements at that time. Everyone was involved with the women’s movement, the peace movement, the civil-rights movement. We were all radicals. I believe that’s what brought it around.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“So Stonewall is a great, great foundation. It began the modern-day liberation movement, like we spoke before about the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
“I am proud of myself as being there that night. If I had lost that moment, I would have been kind of hurt because that’s when I saw the world change for me and my people. Of course, we still got a long way ahead of us.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
On the Gay Rights Bill
“That bill was mine as far as I’m concerned. I helped word it and I worked very hard for it. And that’s why I get upset when I give interviews and whatever because the fucking community has no respect for the people that really did it. Drag queens did it. We did it, we did it for our own brothers and sisters. But, damn it, don’t keep shoving us in the fuckin’ back and stabbing us in the back and that’s… And that’s what really hurts. And it is very upsetting.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“Because for four years we were the vanguard of the gay movement and all of a sudden it was being taken away. We were being pushed out of something we helped create.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I got arrested for petitioning for gay rights. That’s how my whole activist career started. Besides, I didn’t consider that night at Stonewall to be so important out of all the other movements going on. Getting that first arrest for something that I believed in was...wow, what a rush!”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I enjoyed Gay Liberation Front better because we concentrated on many issues for many different struggles. We’re all in the same boat as long as we’re being oppressed one way or the other, whether we are gay, straight, trans, black, yellow, green, purple, or whatever. If we don’t fight for each other, we’ll be put down. And after all these years, the trans community is still at the back of the bus.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“It was like a god-sent thing to me. I mean, I just happened to be there when it all jumped off. I said, ‘Oh, well, great,’ I said, ‘Now it’s my time. Here, I’m out there being a revolutionist for everybody else.’ I said, ‘Now it’s time to do my thing for my own people.’ And I joined GAA, and that first year that we were petitioning for gay rights, on April 15, of that year.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“The reason we, right now, as a trans community, don’t have all the rights they have is that we allowed them to speak for us for so many damn years, and we bought everything they said to us: “Oh, let us pass our bill, then we’ll come for you.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
Regarding Marsha P. Johnson
“She [Marsha P. Johnson] called me to her side, we introduced ourselves, and a very strong sistership was born… We stood by each other, had each other’s back for many years… We’d be getting high or something and we’d start talking politics. We’d start talking politics and about when things were going to change for us as human beings.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
![“She [Marsha P. Johnson] called me to her side, we introduced ourselves, and a very strong sistership was born… We stood by each other, had each other’s back for many years… We’d be getting high or something and we’d start talking politics. We’d start talking politics and about when things were going to change for us as human beings.” — Sylvia Rivera, in an essay](https://assets-global.website-files.com/5f6cc9cd16d59d990c8fca33/6491ad5cedbb20382234ec1a_sylvia-rivera-marsha-p-johnson-1.jpg)
“Marsha and I fought a lot for the liberation of our people. We did a lot back then. Marsha and I had a building on Second Street, which is called STAR House… And now we were taking care of kids that were younger than us. I mean, Marsha and I were young and we were taking care of them… I mean, we took a building that was, I mean, a slum building. We tried. We really did. We went out and made that money off the streets to keep these kids off the street.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“Marsha and I had always sneaked people into our hotel rooms. Marsha and I decided to get a building. We were trying to get away from the Mafia’s control at the bars. We got a building at 213 East 2nd Street. Marsha and I just decided it was time to help each other and help our other kids. We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent. We didn’t want the kids out in the streets hustling. They would go out and rip off food. There was always food in the house and everyone had fun. It lasted for two or three years.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“When I heard that she was murdered, I couldn’t understand why anybody would kill her. Marsha would give the blouse off her back if you asked for it. She would give you her last dollar. She would take off her shoes. I’ve seen her do all these things, so I couldn’t see someone killing her. I know there are crazy people out there. I know there are transphobic people out there. But it’s not like she wasn’t a known trans person. She was loved anywhere she went. Marsha was a great woman.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
→ Read these quotes from Marsha P. Johnson
More Sylvia Rivera Quotes
“The movement had put me on the shelf, but they took me down and dusted me off… Still, it was beautiful. I walked down 58th Street and the young ones were calling from the sidewalk, ‘Sylvia, Sylvia, thank you, we know what you did.’ After that I went back on the shelf. It would be wonderful if the movement took care of its own. But don’t worry about Sylvia.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an interview
“I thought about having a sex change, but I decided not to. I feel comfortable being who I am. That final journey many of the trans women and trans men make is a big journey. It’s a big step and I applaud them, but I don’t think I could ever make that journey… I don’t need the operation to find my identity. I have found my niche, and I’m happy and content with it. I take my hormones. I’m living the way Sylvia wants to live. I’m not living in the straight world; I’m not living in the gay world; I’m just living in my own world with Julia and my friends.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I'm not missing a minute of this. It's the revolution!”
— Sylvia Rivera
“We were all involved in different struggles, including myself and many other transgender people. But in these struggles, in the Civil Rights movement, in the war movement, in the women’s movement, we were still outcasts. The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn’t take no shit from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I’ll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician’s toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
