Quotes from Gilbert Baker

Anita Bryant had the effect of galvanizing the whole gay movement. She was somebody whom everybody could hate. She was easy to hate.

When I fell in love, all the shame and guilt I carried with me for years suddenly vanished.

You don't have to live a lie. Living a lie will mess you up. It will send you into depression. It will warp your values.

I think the Rainbow Flag will survive forever, primarily because it's the perfect flag, regardless of whatever political meaning it may have or evolve to.

The rainbow flag is a symbol of freedom and liberation that we made for ourselves.

I was astounded nobody had thought of making a rainbow flag before because it seemed like such an obvious symbol for us.

A flag translates into everything, from tacky souvenirs to the names of organizations and the way that flags function.

That's really how I ended up making the first flag - I was the guy who could sew it.

Once I was finally liberated from my Kansas background, the first thing I did was get a sewing machine, because it's 1972, and I have to look like Mick Jagger and David Bowie every single second. Taffeta jumpsuits.

I was afraid my family would lock me up and give me electroshock. I was a screaming queen.

What the rainbow has given our people is a thing that connects us.

I love going to cities around the world and seeing the rainbow flag, knowing that it's a safe place where I can be myself.

Flags say something. You put a rainbow flag on your windshield, and you're saying something.

Being gay in San Francisco is fun. Being gay in Saudi Arabia - that's a whole other matter.

Anita Bryant is an important figure in gay history because she enraged a generation of people who got active.

Vexillography is a very big word! Vexillography is really the high science and art and understanding of flags and their history - the academic word for flag making and heraldry.

I came out because I fell in love. It wasn't a terrible, horrible, damn thing. I was in love with somebody, and I wanted to scream it from the rooftops.

A true flag is not something you can really design. A true flag is torn from the soul of the people. A flag is something that everyone owns, and that's why they work. The Rainbow Flag is like other flags in that sense: it belongs to the people.

My parents and I didn't speak for 10 years. It took a long time to rebuild that relationship.

When I was young, they thought I was from outer space. I was the only gay person they probably knew, and they struggled with that. Everybody knew I was gay. They just didn't want to talk about it.

In 1978, when I thought of creating a flag for the gay movement, there was no other international symbol for us than the pink triangle, which the Nazis used to identify homosexuals in concentration camps. Even though the pink triangle was and still is a powerful symbol, it was very much forced upon us.

I decided that we should have a flag, that a flag fit us as a symbol, that we are a people, a tribe if you will. And flags are about proclaiming power, so it's very appropriate.

A rainbow is something in the sky, so a rainbow flag fits.

In 1978, the first flag was organic everything. It did have eight colors: the six colors of the rainbow we see today plus hot pink and turquoise. But pretty quickly on I realized that I would never be able to satisfy the demand for them by hand-dying fabric and these colors.