You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

I love America not for what she is, but for what she can become.

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.

Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws - to perpetuate injustice through inaction.

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

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.

... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.