Shirley Chisholm Quotes
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Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
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Which is more like genocide, I have asked some of my black brothers - this, the way things are, or the conditions I am fighting for in which the full range of family planning services is available to women of all classes and colors, starting with effective contraception and extending to safe, legal terminations of undesired pregnancies at a price they can afford?
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I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
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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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You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
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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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My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.
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To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.
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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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As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.
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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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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.
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Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters. Pride in one's race, as will simple humanity, supports this view.
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My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.
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The difference between de jure and de facto segregation is the difference between open, forthright bigotry and the shamefaced kind that works through unwritten agreements between real estate dealers, school officials, and local politicians.
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Defeat should not be the source of discouragement, but a stimulus to keep plotting.
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Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.
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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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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 things are now, no one can tell to whom members of Congress are responsible, except that it does not often appear to be to the people. Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for 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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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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I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.
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The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'
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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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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.
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The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
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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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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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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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Shirley Chisholm
- Born: November 30, 1924
- Died: January 1, 2005
- Occupation: American Politician
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