Chisholm Shirley Quotes & Sayings

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. — Shirley Chisholm

We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black. — Shirley Chisholm

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

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

No matter what men think, abortion is a fact of life. Women have always had them; they always have and they always will. Are they going to have good ones or bad ones? Will the good ones be reserved for the rich, while the poor women go to quacks? — Shirley Chisholm

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal. — Shirley Chisholm

That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions. — Shirley Chisholm

In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism. — Shirley Chisholm

The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry. — Shirley Chisholm

I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black ... men are men. — Shirley Chisholm

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses. — Shirley Chisholm

Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. List to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN. — Shirley Chisholm

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

It is true that women have seldom been aggressive in de- manding their rights and so have cooperated in their own enslavement. This was true of the black population for many years. They submitted to oppression, and even condoned it. But women are becoming aware, as blacks did, that they can have equal treatment if they will fight for it, and they are starting to organize. To do it, they have to dare the sanctions that society imposes on anyone who breaks with its traditions. This is hard, and especially hard for women, who are taught not to rebel from infancy, from the time they are first wrapped in pink blankets, the color of their caste. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

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, — Shirley Chisholm

I have never cared too much what people way. What I am interested in is what they do. — Shirley Chisholm

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

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. — Alice Walker

When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation's slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free - (Chapter 9). — Shirley Chisholm

To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears. — Shirley Chisholm

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 am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people. — Shirley Chisholm

... My present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States: it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gilded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own, their votes. And who benefits most? The lawyers. (Chapter 4) — Shirley Chisholm

Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth. — Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm is another one [political hero]. She was a dynamic speaker, and the first black woman to run for President. — Donna Brazile

At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. — Shirley Chisholm

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. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don't understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13). — Shirley Chisholm

Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world. — Shirley Chisholm

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? — Shirley Chisholm

The liberals in the House strongly resemble liberals I have known through the last two decades in the civil rights conflict. When it comes time to show on which side they will be counted, they excuse themselves. — Shirley Chisholm

Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution. — Shirley Chisholm

We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now. — Shirley Chisholm

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 ... — Shirley Chisholm

I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place. — Shirley Chisholm

Defeat should not be the source of discouragement, but a stimulus to keep plotting. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers
a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so. — Shirley Chisholm

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo ... to give a voice to the people the major candidates were ignoring. What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male. — Shirley Chisholm

The one thing you've got going: your one vote. — Shirley Chisholm

As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity on both counts. — Shirley Chisholm

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their pres- tige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs? — Shirley Chisholm

Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other. — Shirley Chisholm

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

From the beginning I felt that there were only two ways to create change for black people in this country - either politically or by open armed revolution. Malcolm defined it succinctly - the ballot or the bullet. Since I believe that human life is uniquely valuable and important, for me the choice had to be the creative use of the ballot. I still believe I was right. I hope America never succeeds in changing my mind. — Shirley Chisholm

I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black. — Shirley Chisholm

There is a good deal of evidence that the United States is moving to the right, and that the main force behind the movement is a resurgence, in a new form, of racial prejudice. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

Rhetoric never won a revolution yet. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries." - Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress — Jessica Bennett

Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes ... We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action affirming it, and more. But we must also remember that we will be breaking with tradition, and so we must prepare ourselves educationally, economically, and psychologically in order that we will be able to accept and bear with the sanctions that society will immediately impose upon us. — Shirley Chisholm

I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud; I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history. — Shirley Chisholm

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power. Their first rule is "don't rock the boat." If someone makes trouble and you can get him, do it. If you can't get him, bring him in. Give him some of the action, let him have a taste of power. Power is all anyone wants, and if he has a promise of it as a reward for being good, he'll be good. Anyone who does not play by those rules is incomprehensible to most politicians. — Shirley Chisholm

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

I was well on the way to forming my present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States; it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gelded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own: their votes. And who benefits the most? The lawyers. — Shirley Chisholm

I am and always will be a catalyst for change. — Shirley Chisholm

I'm benefitting from the sacrifices and seeds sown by Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, and so many others. Those of us who are beneficiaries owe it to have a season of service in which we try to give back. — Terri Sewell

All Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased. — Shirley Chisholm

Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster. — Shirley Chisholm

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. — Shirley Chisholm

Lincoln didn't just end slavery. King didn't just dream segregation away. Parks didn't just get tired one day. It is often the unrecognized actions of previous generations that push a society to eventually embrace mantras such as hope, equality, change, and other ideals, which transform the political landscape. Chisholm's actions remind us that there are hundreds of forgotten foot soldiers in history that helped to bring these watershed moments to fruition. For — Shirley Chisholm

It is not female egotism to say that the future of mankind may very well be ours to determine. It is a fact. — Shirley Chisholm

Nikhilananda's birthday. Maybe we'd Morris dance, naked, around the base of an old-growth California redwood, its branches lavishly festooned with the soiled hammocks and poop buckets of crunchy-granola tree sitters mentoring spotted owls in passive-resistance protest techniques. You get the picture. In place of Santa Claus, my mom and dad said Maya Angelou kept tabs on whether little children were naughty or nice. Dr. Angelou, they warned me, did her accounting on a long hemp scroll of names, and if I failed to turn my compost I'd be sent to bed with no algae. Me, I just wanted to know that someone wise and carbon neutral - Dr. Maya or Shirley Chisholm or Sean Penn - was paying attention. But none of that was really Christmas. And none of that Earth First! baloney helps out once you're dead and you discover that the snake-handling, — Chuck Palahniuk

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It's a girl. — Shirley Chisholm

We must reject not only the stereotypes that others hold of us, but also the stereotypes that we hold of ourselves. — Shirley Chisholm

I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential. — Shirley Chisholm