HIV Stigma Quotes

HIV changed my life, but it doesn't keep me from living.

I still cannot fathom how difficult it was for the women I met to find out that they were HIV-positive. It is such a courageous undertaking in countries where there is still considerable stigma about the disease. They got tested to ensure that their unborn babies would have a chance of life by being born free of the virus.

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.

I'll hear people say every so often that having HIV must not be so bad - 'Just look at Magic and how well he's doing.'

HIV does not make people dangerous to be with. So you can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it.

A lot of people have forgotten the severity of this disease, of HIV. So I think it's important that we just talk about things like this: how we can prevent it, how we can make sure that people are safe, how they can move forward, too, if they do have HIV.

Acknowledge World Aids Day! Do what you can to help save lives! #livingforlove

People with HIV are still stigmatized. The infection rates are going up. People are dying. The political response is appalling. The sadness of it, the waste.

[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?" I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.

I just want to recognize, the HIV epidemic was solved by the community, the HIV advocates and activists who stood up when no one was listening and got everyone's attention.

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be HIV-positive and to ask questions about that.

HIV/AIDS has been a big epidemic for my generation, it's been around for as long as I've been alive.

My first understanding of HIV and AIDS was like everybody else from my generation. In the mid-'80s, we heard about this, and it was terrifying, because we knew nothing about how to respond to it appropriately, and we didn't really understand about how the virus is passed. There was a lot of misconception about that.

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.

Of course you know the miracle of AIDS, we all do. It's the only disease that turns fruits into vegetables.

The prejudice surrounding AIDS exacts a social death which precedes the actual physical one.

We think that if we get tested, that means you have to have HIV. Or we think that just by knowing someone with HIV, we're going to get HIV or because he's gay or she's a lesbian or whatever. This false information has been put out there and it's created this stigma that stops us from going to find out if we're infected. The truth is it doesn't matter who you are, if you're having sex, you need to be getting tested, plain and simple.

HIV AIDS is a preventable disease and should never be a source of shame!

And the stigma hasn't really changed that much in 31 years. You are still getting people - it's a shame-based disease. It's based on sexual transmission. And it's still shame-based. And until people feel strong enough and feel loved enough to actually open up and say, listen, I'm HIV-positive, then we are facing an uphill battle.

You might get AIDS in Kenya, people have AIDS, you’ve got to be careful. I mean, the towels could have AIDS.

Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected.

Stigma hurts. Because of AIDS, children are bullied, isolated and shut out of school. They are missing out on education. They are missing out on medicines. Children are missing your love, care and protection. Join me. And become a stigma buster. UNITE FOR CHILDREN UNITE AGAINST AIDS

As a young physician in the mid-'80s, caring for people who had contracted H.I.V., I lost two of my patients to suicide at a time when the virus was doing very little harm to them. I have always thought of them as having been killed by a metaphor, by the burden of secrecy and shame associated with the disease.

HIV is not a death sentence. It doesn't mean life's over. It means that life's going to be different, but you still get to have those moments that people who don't have HIV experience.

Now I walk around with my head down, trying to hide, thinking that everybody knows that I inflicted people with HIV, because that is all they are going to read.