Shirley Chisholm Quotes

We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

I love America not for what she is, but for what she can become.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.

The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.

I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place.

I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.

That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

Rhetoric never won a revolution yet.

Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.

Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.

I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?

When I die, I want to be remembered as a woman who lived in the twentieth century and who dared to be a catalyst of change. I don't want to be remembered as the first black woman who went to Congress. And I don't even want to be remembered as the first woman who happened to be black to make a bid for the Presidency I want to be remembered as a woman who fought for change in the twentieth century. That's what I want.

Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.

Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.

I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black...men are men.

I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I'm not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests... I am the candidate of the people...

As a black person I am no stranger to prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far more often discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws - to perpetuate injustice through inaction.

That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.

As things are now, no one can tell to whom members of Congress are responsible, except that it does not often appear to be to the people. Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.

One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian.

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'

Defeat should not be the source of discouragement, but a stimulus to keep plotting.

We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.

Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.

At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.

Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time... its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.

The difference between de jure and de facto segregation is the difference between open, forthright bigotry and the shamefaced kind that works through unwritten agreements between real estate dealers, school officials, and local politicians.

I have never cared too much what people say. What I am interested in is what they do.

Of my two `handicaps,' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.

I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.

Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.

In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.