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.

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

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

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.

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

There is a good deal of evidence that the United States is moving to the right, and that the main force behind the movement is a resurgence, in a new form, of racial prejudice.

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