Shirley Chisholm Quotes

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- 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.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- 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

Mother always said that even when I was 3, I used to get the 6- and 7-year-old kids on the block and punch them and say, 'Listen to me.'

- 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

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

George Wallace for some strange, unknown reason, he liked me. George Wallace came down to Florida, and he went all over Florida, and he said to the people, 'If you all can't vote for me, don't vote for those oval-headed lizards. Vote for Shirley Chisholm!' And that crashed my votes, because they thought that I was in league with him to get votes.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

I'm finding all over America that people are sick and tired of the tweedle-dee dees and the tweedle-dee dums who constantly flip-flap from one side to another. People are interested in having candidates that are truthful.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- 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

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

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as odd and unfeminine.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- 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

Not only am I literally and figuratively the dark horse, I'm actually the poor horse. The only thing that I have going for me is my soul and my commitment to the American people.

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- 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, the Christian love that it would take.

- Shirley Chisholm

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.

- Shirley Chisholm

I know that millions of Americans from all walks of life agree with me that leadership does not mean putting the ear to the ground to follow public opinion, but to have the vision of what is necessary and the courage to make it possible.

- Shirley Chisholm

Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want.

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- 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

I am the people's politician. If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished.

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm

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

- Shirley Chisholm