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

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

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.

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

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.

As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.

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