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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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