Eddie Van Halen Quotes

The whole idea that what is not normal should be kept secret - that's really distasteful to me.

A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other.

The problem is that people have an idea of what a footballer should look like, how they should behave, what they should talk about. If you act a little differently you become a target. There is pressure to conform. This is very dangerous.

If you don't clap for Todrick Hall, guess what Mary, you're a homophobe.

I was born in the Eighties, and at that time the idea of having a mixed-race child wasn't welcome. Then I was also an unusual mix nobody was used to seeing. So people weren't very accepting of me in the beginning, but later that changed.

Color don't mean anything. People gonna try to put you in a place one way or the other.

I am tired of people telling me that black people are beneath a standard when we have to be twice as good all the time.

Xenophobia is dangerous, but patriotism is a good thing.

I'm African-American. There are more eyes on me than anybody. They're going to take the negative before the positive.

Players do not come out of the closet because they are afraid. We have to appear hard and strong, but we are afraid of what people will say about us. Of course, I have nothing against anyone. I respect everybody.

It's not like we wanted to talk about the fact that we're gay all the time, but the world has forced it to be an issue.

If one of my own makes a mistake, they judge us all. Tomorrow, if a white man in Africa makes a mistake, we should judge all white people? No!

The second I bring up race in the sport, I'm immediately race-baiting. But I can point out clear facts, where no other champion has been treated like me.

You walk into a room and there's already judgment. You know, like football players can't act or you're going to come in and be stiff.

Anything that's outside the standard of the average black male is looked down upon. For me, I wasn't raised playing sports. I was artistic, so that was looked down upon by people in my church, and I was teased for that growing up in school, so it goes both ways.

People were so cruel because of the way I existed.

Sometimes, people only change what they look like for the acceptance of other people, and that's where you start going wrong.

I'm in a Catch-22. If I don't go after a ball, I'm lazy, I'm not giving it 100 percent. If I do dive for the ball - which I did, and blew out my shoulder - it's, Why did I play it so hard?

Asian males have not been appreciated for what they are. They have always been dissed for what they are not.

I'm constantly fighting the angry black woman stigma, the 'You're pretty, you can't be funny' stigma.

If I don't wear a wig, I'm called a nasty f*g, if I do wear a wig, I'm hilarious.

I don't care if you're talking about gay, straight, black, white, how in the name of hell can you guarantee that nobody will ever feel unwelcome? I have felt it unwelcome everywhere I've been in life. Everybody else has, too. I mean, not everywhere, but it happens.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

Benedict XVI kept saying that homosexuals are deviant. They're not deviant. They're deviant only if you say that anyone who is different from me is abnormal.

One time I was doing an interview for a gay magazine and halfway through the journalist found out I wasn't gay. He said, 'Sorry, I can't continue the interview.' Because they only had gay public figures in their magazine. I felt so crestfallen. I wanted to tell him: but I play fundraisers for gay marriage! I'd rather my kids were gay than straight!'