Quotes from 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.

Of course 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.

America is composed of all kinds of people - part of the difficulty in our nation today is due to the fact that we are not utilising the abilities and the talents of other brown and black peoples and females that have something to bring to the creativity and the rejuvenation and the revitalisation of this country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

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.

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)

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

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).

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?

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

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.