Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.

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.

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

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

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