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

When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free - (Chapter 9).

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

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

My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.

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.

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.