Janet Mock Quotes

Don't hate the media, become the media.

If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.

Of course I want the things I write to reflect well on me or anyone who might feel represented by me, but also, I'm not writing a guidebook on how to be or how my people should be seen. I'm telling very specific stories.

People who want alternative information have to try so hard to find it.

People should never allow themselves to be dictated to by media.

You can't get past the liberal press with a bucket of ink.

One of the beautiful things about podcasting is that I'm not beholding to some public entity.

... infiltrate and neutralize the mainstream American media.

We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.

Deciding to not attach ourselves to something that doesn't appropriately represent us is extremely powerful.

What is portraiture? It's choice. It's the ability to position your body in the world for the world to celebrate you on your own terms.

I believe people have the right to tell their own story as honestly and accurately as they can.

The strength of 'The Gift' is that the people featured and their stories are given the space to speak for themselves.

The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.

Every story has a point of view and whether it's by what one chooses to include or exclude from a story or whether it's a very specific agenda that is pushed, there is no such thing as objective media. Once you realize that it's more than just a marketplace of ideas, it's a battleground of ideas that are suppressed and the ideas that are pushed forward in the mainstream media are the ones that independent media has a chance to address. I think that the democratization of media in that way can be very helpful in allowing the truth to come out in a way that it might not on CNN or FOX.

Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

I'm not representing other people. I'm representing me.

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.

Freedom means the capability to say yes when yes is needed, to say no when no is needed, and sometimes to keep quiet when nothing is needed - to be silent, not to say anything. When all these dimensions are available, there is freedom.

Be brave, be bold, be free.

I believe everyone should have the freedom to represent what they believe-in in their own way.

The object is for everyone to do their own thing, but the thing is to make one's thing the Revolution.

Don't wait around for someone else to tell your story. Do it yourself by whatever means necessary.

When you leave here today and commence the next stage of your life, you can follow someone else's script, try to make choices that will make other people happy, avoid discomfort, do what is expected, and copy the status quo. Or you can look at all that you have accomplished today and use it as fuel to venture forth and write your own story. If you do, amazing things will take shape.

... women of the North, I ask you to rise up with earnest, honest purpose, and go forward in the way of right, fearlessly, as independent human beings, responsible to God alone for the discharge of every duty, for the faithful use of every gift, the good Father has given you. Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world will say, whether you are in your place or out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, do your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.