It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity.

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

Of my two `handicaps,' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.

When I die, I want to be remembered as a woman who lived in the twentieth century and who dared to be a catalyst of change. I don't want to be remembered as the first black woman who went to Congress. And I don't even want to be remembered as the first woman who happened to be black to make a bid for the Presidency I want to be remembered as a woman who fought for change in the twentieth century. That's what I want.

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

Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.