Shirley Chisholm

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo. The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew, or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.

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

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

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.

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

I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being black, in the field of politics.

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

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

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

I'm looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I'm doing.

The emotional sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says Its a girl.

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.

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.

Rhetoric never won a revolution yet.

I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.

Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.

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

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.

I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the woman's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that.

I ran because somebody had to do it first. In this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run for president, but that has never really been true.

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

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, the Christian love that it would take.

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.

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.

I stand before you today to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates simply because he is not white or because she is not a male.

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

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.

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

The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board - or a member of the House - does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job, and she wants to try.

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

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.

You dont make progress by standing on the sidelines whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.