And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

by Randy Shilts

All history resolves itself quite easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “Self-Reliance”

“The problem lies not in evil personalities or traitorous acts, but rather in the political orientation which believes that an oppressed group gets what it needs by being careful not to offend the powerful,” Bill reported to the Milk Club after the platform compromise. “The problem lies in the desire to protect the little that we have gotten by not risking a fight for what we deserve. The problem lies in believing that what we have gotten is somehow a favor given by politicians rather than the politicians’ recognition of what we have the political power to demand and to get.”

Cleve never viewed his sexual adventures as conquests, like many of his friends; instead, they were little romances, brief studies into another idea of what a human being could be.

The disease is moving even if the government isn’t.

If you don’t abide by scientific principles, chaos will ensue.

Prejudice has a way of fostering the very object of its hate.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point, but they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. —ALBERT CAMUS, The Plague

“I got it, I finally got it,” he said. “I am love and light, and I transform people by just being who I am.”

Insanity triumphed because sane people were silent.

“At times like these, we are tempted to turn to authority figures, as we did when we were children, to ask them to protect us, to take the responsibility from our shoulders, to tell us that they can save us from ourselves,”

The light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train.