I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black...men are men.

To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.

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

Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

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.

That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.