Shirley Chisholm Quotes
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Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.
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Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.
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It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.
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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.
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Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.
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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.
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Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
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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.
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You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
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Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.
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That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.
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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.
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To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.
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Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.
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As a black person I am no stranger to prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far more often discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.
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As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.
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Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
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I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I'm not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests... I am the candidate of the people...
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I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.
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Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster.
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One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian.
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There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.
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I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.
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I am and always will be a catalyst for change.