Shirley Chisholm Quotes
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In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.
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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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Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.
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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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Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.
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Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.
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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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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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Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
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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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That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.
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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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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.
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Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster.
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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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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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To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.
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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 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.
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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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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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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.
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I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.