HIV/AIDS Awareness Quotes

I went on French television for 20 minutes. It was very embarrassing to have to say, 'I'm not dead. I'm well. I'm not ill, and I don't have AIDS.' I hated doing it, because it was so insulting to those who really did have AIDS.

Peter Jennings came to us and said to make a PSA, 'Let's Talk About AIDS.' But I was naive about how the virus is contracted - until Magic Johnson came out. I'd stereotyped it, thinking it was a gay disease, a white man's disease.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared, a lot of the reaction was that it's not happening here. It doesn't exist. It's not on the continent of Africa. Then we moved into this other phase, in which it was kind of like, it's everywhere.

When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected mostly young gay men - it was actually called GRID for a short period of time: Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome - and people thought it actually might be recreational drugs or other types of toxins.

It's so self-evident that I have to live my own history, to remind people the fact that I got into radio back in the early '80s was because of AIDS and HIV. It was what motivated me - that was the topic that I felt was so important that I had to talk about it, educating young people about it.

You can't get AIDS from a hug or a handshake or a meal with a friend.

It is my mission to ensure that HIV-positive children and children with AIDS are no longer overlooked and that they begin receiving the treatment and care they deserve.

Being part of the Queen story and knowing what Freddie Mercury went through before he died of AIDS has really shown me how far we've come in fighting this disease.

I am so honoured to be supporting the Elton John AIDS Foundation and their mission making London and our global cities AIDS-free.

People with HIV and AIDS are nothing to be afraid of. They are people just like every single one of us, and each has a story to tell. These people should be helped, embraced, and not dismissed. We need to open our hearts and our minds to them, and we just may learn we're pretty much all the same.

The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.

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 felt like calling attention to AIDS. I had the AIDS ribbon colored into my hair during the playoffs in '95.

In the 1980s we had the huge catastrophe of AIDS and you would walk down the street and see someone who was dying. It was horrendous.

AIDS is a very, very, very vicious disease, particularly in the black community.

Most recently my battle has been against AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it.

In 1984, my mom gave birth to my older sister, Teresa. Due to a complicated delivery, she needed a blood transfusion, and at that moment, my mom had HIV+ blood put into her body.

The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?

I lost relatives to AIDS. A couple of my closest cousins, favorite cousins. I lost friends to AIDS, high school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s. When it's that close to you, you can't - you know, you can't really deny it, and you can't run from it.

[AIDS ] is not a short-term emergency but it is something that, just like smallpox was many decades ago, we should aim for complete eradication.

I'm over there filming in South Africa now, and two in five are HIV-positive now. Not many people know that.

You can’t do anything about HIV-AIDS unless you are willing to talk about condoms.

I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS. There is no shame in being tested for AIDS. It’s an important thing.

My mom's best friend growing up was diagnosed with AIDS, and he basically raised me when my mom was launching her business. Although I didn't understand at the time what HIV or AIDS was, I knew that's what he passed away from.

Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.