Luvvie Quotes

Black trauma is never given space to heal because we have to make sure the white people who hurt us don’t feel too bad about it. Even as victims, we’re told to care about the feelings of those who harm us.

I'm not interested in living in a world where my race is not part of who i am. I am interested in living in a world where our races, no matter what they are, don't define our trajectory in life.

First of all, even nice people can be racists, because racism does not depend on malicious intent. It is not a requirement for you to consciously hate someone who is of a different skin color for you to be racist. Let me repeat. You do not need to actively hate someone who is of a different race than you to do racist crap and hold racist views.

Real women breathe.

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

We are entrusting thousands of strangers with our innermost thoughts and feelings, and then we're expecting them to be careful with those feelings. As much as we want it to be, the Internet is not a safe space. It is not a place where we can lay our burdens down and heal. Why? Because there are too many people there who do not give an ounce of a shit about our well-being. They do not deserve our rawness, and they will not treat it with care.

Why try to change who you were born to be and force yourself into who you think everyone will find more beautiful? Society has failed people to the point where they feel they cannot like themselves in the skin they were born in.

Racism is not a byproduct as much as it's the foundational stock in the American soup.

But we are more than the sum of our parts, and we are more than the numbers on our scales. Be like me and judge people by the decisions they make with their eyebrows. That’s way more important.

We will ruffle feathers. We might be the villains in a few people’s stories. We might even blow up a few bridges. But our worth is not based on how much we acquiesced to the people we knew. The goal is to betray ourselves less. So, be kind but take no shit.

White women, include women of color in your agenda as you fight for equality. Don’t leave us behind and then only call on us when you need our numbers.

If you constantly have to play ombudsman for your beloved, you’re in a co-dependent prison of your own making. People will keep doing what they can get away with.

Black people actually have to PROVE their humanity, instead of having it accepted as a given.

Being able to live without having to be defined by your skin color is the hallmark of privilege.

A successful life is one lived on my own terms, not one where I end every day more tired than the last. And if everyone else around me is happy but I’m empty, then I have betrayed myself.

I am not asking everyone to be activists. I am not asking everyone to march on the front lines. I am not asking every writer, public figure, or celebrity to lead social movements. I am not asking them to make speeches on how they have a dream. I am, however, challenging people not to stay silent as the world crumbles. You do not have to yell. Even a whisper of truth matters in an echo chamber of lies.

People have niceness and kindness mixed up. Niceness might mean saying positive things. But kindness is doing positive things: being thoughtful and considerate, prioritizing people’s humanity over everything else.

Don’t let people who can’t spell your name right tell you about who you are. Don’t let folks who only have courage behind a keyboard define your goodness or your worth as a person. Do not let people who are already rooting for you to falter insist on your value, because they will steer you wrong.

There's power in believing there's a God in each of us because if we are made in His/Her/Their image, aren't we all like good horcruxes for God? Because a piece of them is in us?

The fight for equality on any front does not equate to the oppression of the oppressors.

Fear can very concretely keep us from doing and saying the things that are our purpose.

It’s like someone breaks your arm, and the person who slammed the baseball bat into it is saying, “The only reason it won’t heal is because you keep complaining that it hurts.” How about you get me a cast so the bone can set straight again? America does not want to put the effort into providing this cast. This is why we must talk about race, and we must do it openly. As

People rush to discredit survivors and protect perpetrators because it’s easier to deny that something happened than to deal with the fact that there are predators in our midst. Unfortunately,

I am not ride-or-die. Those are some pretty limiting choices: So if I’m not riding, I gotta die? Can I get off and take the bus? Is “Let’s talk about it” an option? What about “ride, or pause this if we need to”? There

Owning your dopeness is not about being liked by others. It’s really about being liked by you first. One of my favorite proverbs is “When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.” If you are strong in yourself, the actions of everyone else are less likely to move you.

Lifelong full-body salving is why Black folks look so young. Black doesn’t snap, crackle, or pop—why? Because: moisture. It’s why some of us look twelve at thirty. Listen to me, white folks. I’m dropping life secrets here. Why else do you think the Olsen twins (born in 1986) look the same age as Nia Long (born in 1970)? You haven’t used the BUTTERS.

A professional troublemaker is someone who is committed to being authentically themselves while speaking the truth and doing some scary shit. Here is to us, daring to live boldly.

Womanhood should be defined by each person for herself, because we are not all the same, and there’s no one way we can define it as a group.

Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

The goal is to betray ourselves less. So, be kind but take no shit.

When we want to say something and our voice shakes, we should take that to spur us forward, because that is when it is most necessary. Let your voice tremble, but say it anyway.

What matters is how I handle it and move forward. That is what I will truly be judged on,

Well, looks like everything’s mostly shipshape and Bristol fashion, luvvy,” said Miss Forcible.

Know that you have the right to have your preferences, your borders, your boundaries. Tell people outright that you prefer another type of behavior. Wear a T-shirt. Make PSAs. Use a hashtag. Feel no guilt about it. Prevent riffraffery and the enemies of progress from constantly piercing your territory. Build a wall to keep tomfoolery out. Draw your lines without guilt.

I’ve learned that the audacity to speak my dreams out loud, even if only to myself, has taken me far. I marvel at how many times the things I have dared to say have come true. The things I have let myself dream about. I ask, not with entitlement, but with hope, and magical things have happened.

Spend your privilege.” She got it from disability rights advocate Rebecca Cokley. It is the concept that the privilege we have in this world is endless. It doesn’t run out. You don’t use your voice today and have to re-up the next day. Power is limitless, and using ours for other people does not diminish it.

I am not fearless. But I’ve learned to start pushing past fear because oftentimes, the fear itself is scarier than whatever is on the other side. It’s like being afraid to walk through a dark hallway. If you close your eyes and run through it, you’ll be okay. And you’ll look back and say, “That wasn’t that bad.

The things we must do are more significant than the things we are afraid to do. It doesn’t mean we don’t realize there are consequences. It means we acknowledge that they may come but we insist on keeping on.

When we dream, we’re giving others permission to do the same. When our dreams are big, we’re telling the folks who know us that they don’t have to be small either. When our dreams come true, we’re expanding the worlds of others because now they know theirs can too. We must dream and dream boldly and unapologetically.

Our privileges are the things not within our own control that push us forward and move us ahead from that starting line. Acknowledging them does not mean you are admitting to doing something to contribute to someone's else oppression. It means that you recognize that some part of your identity puts you in a better position than others.

Our privileges are the things not within our own control that push us forward and move us ahead from that starting line. Acknowledging them does not mean you are admitting to doing something to purposefully contribute to someone else’s oppression or marginalization. Nay, friends. It means you recognize that some part of your identity puts you in a better position than others. It means something about you assists your progress in the race of life. It also means that whatever majority group you belong to has likely contributed to the oppression of another. Knowing our privilege does not make us villains, but it should make us more conscious about the parts we play in systems that are greater than us. It should make us be more thoughtful; it should humble us. We need to admit that some of us had a head start and aren’t just flourishing on our strength alone.

This is a place that was “discovered” by a dude who didn’t know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, “TA-DA.” No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus’s goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else’s property and claimed it as his because he didn’t know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris

Withnail: This is ridiculous. Look at me, I'm 30 in a month and I've got a sole flapping off my shoe. Marwood: It'll get better, it has to. Withnail: Easy for you to say, luvvie, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? It's ridiculous. I've been to drama school. I'm good looking. I tell you, I've a fuck sight more talent that half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can't I get on television? Marwood: Well, I don't know. It'll happen. Withnail: Will it? That's what you say. The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news.

Some well-meaning folks think if we stop talking about racism, it’ll magically disappear, like the smell of an errant fart. But like a fart, people might try to be polite and ignore it, but everyone knows it’s there. Avoidance has never been a great tactic in solving any problem. For most situations in life, not addressing what's going wrong only makes matters worse. It’s like someone breaks your arm, and the person who slammed the baseball bat into it is saying, 'The only reason it won’t heal is because you keep complaining that it hurts.' How about you get me a cast so the bone can set straight again? America does not want to put the effort into providing this cast. This is why we must talk about race, and we must do it openly.

Being accused of TOO MUCHness is to be told to take up less space. Being TOO much is to be excessive. How do you combat that? By being less than you are. And that concept feels like nothing other than self-betrayal. The inverse of too much is too little. I’d rather be too big than too small any day.

I have NO LOVE for those who consider themselves “good people” but stand idly by as the world crumbles around them. It’s not enough to personally not do damage. If you’re present as someone else destroys what’s around you and you do nothing, you helped them. And there’s a bunch of do-nothing-ass white folks sitting around today stunned. Everyone lets themselves off the hook by saying “Well, it wasn’t me who did it.” BUT YOU WERE THERE. What did you do to stop it?!? You sleep better at night knowing it wasn’t you who made those racist/homophobic/Islamophobic jokes. But you were there when they happened.

Times of crisis and chaos present us with the opportunity to do the best work of our lives. People use words that they pull from the depths of their spirits. People paint with strokes that they summon from their souls. People sing notes that come from the cosmos. People innovate. We must keep doing that.

I did not attend any Academy so it is not my job to police you or try to catch you in any act. If I get to the point where I feel the need to do that, I'd rather just walk away cuz it means you've lost my trust and without that, we have nothing left. Our foundation is cracked and I'm not living in a shaky house.

In all of these, your job is not to stop being this person you are accused of being. You aren’t supposed to constantly shape-shift to make those around you feel better about their own insecurities or failures. Your job is not to chameleon your way through life to the point where you forget what your true colors are. If you are too big, then it’s a reflection that the place you’re in is too small for you. It isn’t your job to get smaller to fit there, but to find a place that is bigger than you so you can take up all the space you want and grow infinitely. Anyplace that demands you shrink is a place that will suffocate your spirit and leave you gasping for air.

When we are afraid of having too much hope, we’re actually afraid of being disappointed. We are anxious about expecting the world to gift us and show us grace, because what if we end up on our asses? So we dream small or not at all. Because if we expect nothing or expect something small, we cannot be disappointed when the big things don’t happen.

I ask myself three questions before I say something that might shake the table. Do you mean it? Is this thing something I actually believe? Can you defend it? Being the challenger, I also have to be okay with being questioned and prodded. My ideas need to be explored deeper. Can I stand in it and justify it? Do I have receipts? Can you say it thoughtfully or with love? Is my intention good here? I might think I am righteous in my indignation or in my questioning, but am I saying it thoughtfully or with love? No matter how righteous it feels, no matter how true it might feel, if I say this thing in a way that’s hateful or that makes people feel demeaned or less than, the message will not land.

If the consequence is you get fired, is that an actual place you want to work? If you can get fired for challenging one idea in one meeting, is that company worth your time and energy? If the consequence is not that you’ll be fired or written up, then what is actually on the line if you speak up? Is it that you won’t be liked by whoever you challenged?

Who am I expecting to do this work, if not me?

But the audacity to ask. It was everything. Ask for what you want. The universe might surprise you and say YES.

White feminism has bred far too many mean girls who think they are fighting for all women but who are really fighting just for the ones who look like them. Let

how many love stories begin with, “He yelled at me from his car as I was going to work?” If

To know ourselves is to write our values in cement even if our goals are in sand.

I’ve learned that gasping for air while volunteering to give others CPR is not heroic. It’s suffocation by resentment.

You don’t civil your way to justice.

OWE anyone your time, energy, or platform. Do not feel guilty about being protective of any of those things.

It’s that quote from an old dead Greek dude, Heraclitus of Ephesus, come to life: “Change is the only constant in life.” Nobody has proven this wrong yet.

I like to think of myself as ahead of my time because I’m already cranky and ornery, and I’m working toward getting a lawn just so I can chase people off it.

we need to stop expecting fearlessness and acknowledge that we’re anxious but we aren’t letting fear be our deciding factor.

I realized then that one of my purposes is to make sure that I don’t have to see people behind me. If there are people behind me, I need to find a way to get them by my side.

Failure is life’s greatest teacher, and the only way we truly fail is to learn nothing from the valleys we experience.

A professional troublemaker is someone who critiques the world, the shoddy systems, and the people who refuse to do better.

This isn’t a life of sine metu (Latin for “without fear”). It is a life of “I might be afraid but I won’t let it stop me.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” It is time for our actions to start proving the truth of our words.

The things we must do are more significant than the things we are afraid to do.

People have made it too easy to know everything about their personal business because of social media, especially Facebook. That is a digital Lipton factory where all gossip tea goes to boil.

The United States of America was built on the backs of Black and brown people, and it still stands on our necks. This is why I’m judging this country for the racism that permeates everything about it.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Do not let people make you feel bad for being successful, and for being you, and for being amazing, and for being accomplished. If people get upset at you for announcing something you did, those people are not your people. Those people do not deserve your dopeness. And those people serve no important role in your life. Anyone who is upset that I’m doing well is an enemy of progress, and I don’t need them around me.

As you evolve, you should not let people weaponize the old you against the new you. There are those who will hate your growth so much that they will remind you of your past in an attempt to piss on your future.

Know that grace and accountability can coexist. Grace makes you forgive yourself for your mistakes and accountability lets you know that the lesson learned must be remembered and those mistakes can’t be frequent.

Who we are should not be beholden to the moods of the people we are around, their insecurities, or their projections. Because when someone says you are too much, it is more of a statement on them than it is on you.

We are all fighting battles with the world, systems, ourselves. Battles that are easy to lose. It’s so much easier to keep doing what feels comfortable. What feels safe. But then we might look up one day and realize that we’ve safety-netted ourselves into lives that feel like cages. Cages can get comfortable, but comfort is overrated. Being quiet is comfortable. Keeping things the way they’ve been is comfortable. But all comfort does is maintain the status quo.

You're so skinny! Do you eat?! Maybe you just need a sandwich. No, I don't eat. I survive on a steady diet of air and water. Don't worry about me, worry about you. You don't see me walking up to you, saying, "I see you've been eating. A LOT." Rude.

I reflect on the words of the world-changing GOOD troublemaker John Lewis: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something, to say something, and not be quiet.” We have a moral obligation to tell the truth. Tell the truth, even when our voices shake. Tell the truth even when it might rock the boat. Tell the truth, even when there might be consequences. Because that in itself, makes us more courageous than most people in the world. Use the three questions, know your voice is necessary, and speak truth to power. Even a whisper of truth makes a difference in an echo chamber of lies.

The times when it is most uncomfortable for us to speak up are usually when our voices are most needed and when what we need to say is most important. Why? Because it’s hard to stand and speak truth to power when it comes to anything that is not trivial. When our voices shake, that’s when the words need to be heard the most.

Women create and work in nonprofits because, as the nurturers, we say, “We want to help the world.” No, help yourself first, sis. And then help the world. Put your mask on first and all that jazz. I preach the gospel of us leaving the world better than we found it, but we also have to be able to leave ourselves better for it, not worse.

If you’re living a life of color, of impact, of note, you will make mistakes. You will fuck up. You will show you are an everlasting fool who constantly needs to get their shit together. And that’s okay. Because failure is necessary. It’s essential for us to live loudly. It is painful, it is usually unexpected, and it can knock us on our asses.

Do not force yourself to want less to appease other people. Do not dumb down your needs so you won’t want to ask for more. You want what you want. Ask for it. A NO will not kill you. Ask for more, because if the fear of disappointment stops you from going for what you want, then you are choosing failure in advance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we don’t think that we should ask for the thing we want, whether it’s a promotion from our boss, or more acts of service from our partner, or more attention from our friends, then we are opting for the NO, instead of trying for a YES. If we get the NO, we are still in the same place we are, losing nothing. But what if we got the YES, which would lead us closer to where we want to be?

Instead, I think we should aspire to be kind. To be kind is to be generous, fair, honest, helpful, altruistic, gracious, tolerant, understanding, humble, giving, vulnerable, magnanimous, service-driven. To be nice is to smile a lot and be chatty with random strangers. Nice is talking about the weather. Kind is caring about whether someone has an umbrella in case it rains.

If we do not give ourselves permission to dream, how do we give ourselves permission to thrive? So give yourself the allowance to think about that thing that feels too big and too far to touch. Life’s adventures never promised a straight path, and that’s often what stops us. But we must dream. All we have, even in the worst moments, are the dreams of better things to come.

Facebook, for example, allows you to have five thousand friends. Just because that is the maximum doesn’t mean that is the number you should have. Just because your house can safely fit one hundred people in it doesn’t mean that is the number you should invite for dinner today. We don’t control a lot in life, but we can manage who we let into our physical and virtual spaces.

There are some people who fall short in the being thoughtful department. They aren't being malicious but they certainly tap dance on people's last nerves with their shenanigans. These are the people who are perpetually late, take advantage of their friends in various ways, and children. We know them and we love them and we keep them in our lives but we sometimes wish that they would get their shit together.

Above all, trust life. Yes, it’s a raving douchecanoe at times. But trust the universe/God. Sometimes I think half my reason for believing in a deity is so I don’t lose hope and think life is a random mixture of arbitrary instances and none of it has any structure. That might drive me mad. I choose to believe in a higher being as an anchor and a grounding. I don’t think I have a choice but to have a deep belief that it will work out. It lets me get out of bed even when I’m feeling low. If control is a mirage, trust that God will order your steps. Have faith that Allah will place the right people in your path: the helpers. One of my favorite prayers when I’m about to walk into a new room is: “Please let my helper find me. Let me not miss the right connection I am supposed to make. Let me not miss the reason I am here.

Oftentimes, when we want something that doesn’t come with a manual, we are afraid of it, because we could lose our way since there’s no map. Well, maybe WE are supposed to draw the map, so someone who comes behind us won’t get lost. Create the map you didn’t have. That’s what I did. We must give ourselves permission to be who we want to be, even if we don’t have the blueprint yet, and that starts with dreaming.

If we can’t put justice over niceness, what are we doing as a people? Where are we going to end up if we continue to turn the other cheek when somebody harms us? The people who harm us are not being told to be civil or nice or to take the high road. It’s always the person who’s been victimized in some way who is told to make that choice. Does that serve us? We’re going to be civil and we’re going to nice our way into bondage.

Even though people like to act fake-offended at the idea that they’re being judged, we know good and well that we are all judging each other. We just happen to critique each other on the wrong things, like what we look like, who we love, what deity we worship, if any. Instead, we should assess each other on how kind we are, how we’re showing up for other humans, and how we’re contributing to the world’s problems, large or small.

The communities we belong to are an important part of our identity. They TEACH us what is acceptable, respectable, or tolerable, from the way we dress to the music we listen to, to the things we consider our core beliefs. None of your friends smoke? Well, you’ll be less likely to. None of your friends have a master’s degree? Where do you even start if you want to get yours? All your friends dress like members of the Addams Family? Then your seersucker shorts will probably seem out of place.

I am not a fan of asking folks to turn the other cheek in situations where they shouldn’t feel obligated to do so. On certain occasions, the insistence on taking the high road is actually harming us more than it’s helping. Putting harmony over justice and civility over amends is a harmful practice if we are telling people to constantly bypass defending themselves or standing against what is awry. I’m not for the kumbaya of it all. People read that Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and love our neighbors, but that is the SAME person who also flipped tables in a temple when folks did too much.

Imagine this: You and another person both start on the first floor in a climb to the top. You are taking big steps and quickly find yourself on the seventh floor. But when you look down, the other person is only on floor three. Sure, it warrants comparison because you started at the same place. The distance is more clear. The thing is, though, we don’t go up the stairs at the same pace. Our journeys are different. The dragons we each have to slay are different. Instead of comparing, our job should be to cheer each other on and tell each other to keep going. Maybe we even warn them of the dragons that await and share how we beat ours.

I know for a fact that I would be awful if I was built like Serena Williams or Jennifer Lopez... If I had a body remotely close to what they have, I would be a terror. My ass would cause me to do really inappropriate and rude things. I'd be so ridiculous that people would be able to pick my labia out of a lineup. I'd wear zero clothes any- and everywhere, every day. I'd show up at church rocking a denim thong and a cropped T-shirt and have the nerve to sit right next to the head usher and dare her to say anything to me. And if anyone did say something to me, I'd tell them, "Jesus blessed me in many ways, and I am just showing off His works. HALLELUJAH." People would be disgusted and appalled by me and I wouldn't care. All insults would bounce off my ample backside. To whom much is given, much is required, and I'd require that my much would be given nary an inch of fabric. I'd hire a band whose sole job would be to follow me around and play theme music for my yansh, based on the mood I was in... I might opt to walk backwards into any room I entered, because why not?... I might also declare my booty its own limited liability corporation, assigning myself as CEO and chairman of the Donk. My jeans would be tax-deductible business expenses, and I would add my ass to my LinkedIn profile's Skills section. Everyone would throw hate ration in my dancery, and I wouldn't even see it, protected as I would be by the throne I sat atop.

We challenge each other because if I’m your keeper, your underskirt can’t be showing on my watch. Your mistake can’t go unchecked; otherwise I’m leaving your back wide-open, when I said I got it. It’s about holding each other accountable and calling each other in (not out) when we fall on our faces. If you’re making piss-poor decisions, your friends should be able to pull you by your collar and tell you to get your shit together. A friend group that does that is a gift, and will always ensure that we are being the version of ourselves that we’ll be proud of. Otherwise, we’ll have to answer to them, and we don’t want that smoke. There are so many rewards to building a proper village that the accompanying fear isn’t worth it. Throughout my life, I’ve felt betrayed and abandoned and rejected by people who I let into my life. We’ve all felt it. It’s knocked me on my ass a few times. But I also think about what others have done for me or said to me that has lifted me up or pushed me forward. Those moments beat any of the betrayals. Those times attest to the need to never harden myself completely.

Racism is not always white hoods and burning crosses. It is on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill. It’s in public policies and financial systems that keep us from getting ahead. You shoot the gun at the start of the race of life, but some of us can’t even take our first step because we’re chained to a pole.

You’re straight? Love people, no matter who they choose to love. Don’t treat your gay friends as accessories. Don’t use or stay silent when someone else uses derogatory language. Don’t try to pray someone’s gay away. You’re able? Invite your friends with disabilities to places where they will not struggle to enter or exist. Teach your children that different isn’t synonymous with subpar. Raise kids who have seen you lead by example. Let them know that to be a good person means embracing all people, even those whose normal may be different from others’.

Like Likes: 3 Why try to change who you were born to be and force yourself into who you think everyone will find more beautiful? Society has failed people to the point where they feel they cannot like themselves in the skin they were born in.

Ninety-four percent of murders of Black people are committed by other Black people, and 86 percent of murders of white people are committed by other white people. Why? Because we mostly interact within our racial groups. People victimize other people