Best quotes from Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York’s 12th congressional district, a district centered in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Throughout her career, she was known for taking “a resolute stand against economic, social, and political injustices,” as well as being a strong supporter of black civil rights and women’s rights. She started working in early childhood education, and she became involved in local Democratic Party politics in the 1950s. In 1964, overcoming some resistance because she was a woman, she was elected to the New York State Assembly.

Four years later, she was elected to Congress, where she led the expansion of food and nutrition programs for the poor and rose to party leadership. She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mount Holyoke College while continuing her political organizing. Although nominated for the ambassadorship to Jamaica in 1993, health issues caused her to withdraw. In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Some of the best quotes from Shirley Chisholm are listed below.

1. “All we want is for the trivial difference to make no difference.” – Shirley Chisholm
2. “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. It is perhaps unrealistic to hope that I can help give this nation any of those things, but that is what I believe I have to try to do.” – Shirley Chisholm
3. “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” – Shirley Chisholm
4. “Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.” – Shirley Chisholm
5. “Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.” – Shirley Chisholm
6. “Apparently all they know here in Washington about Brooklyn is that a tree grew there.” – Shirley Chisholm
7. “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.” – Shirley Chisholm
8. “As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers – a great pity on both counts.” – Shirley Chisholm
9. “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
10. “At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.” – Shirley Chisholm
11. “Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.” – Shirley Chisholm
12. “Defeat should not be the source of discouragement, but a stimulus to keep plotting.” – Shirley Chisholm
13. “Don’t listen to those who say YOU CAN’T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.” – Shirley Chisholm
14. “Following along the path of her role models, Shirley knew that if she waited for permission, she’d never receive her turn.” – Shirley Chisholm
15. “Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.” – Shirley Chisholm
16. “I am and always will be a catalyst for change.” – Shirley Chisholm
17. “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
18. “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
19. “I am, and always will be a catalyst for change.” – Shirley Chisholm
20. “I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.” – Shirley Chisholm
21. “I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.” – Shirley Chisholm
22. “I have already moved away from being a moderate, a liberal. My frustrations at trying to operate through channels and following the prescribed procedures, and failing to get any action, have radicalized me.” – Shirley Chisholm
23. “I have never cared too much what people say. What I am interested in is what they do.” – Shirley Chisholm
24. “I love America not for what she is, but for what she can become.” – Shirley Chisholm
25. “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
26. “I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, 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 dared to be herself.” – Shirley Chisholm
27. “I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.” – Shirley Chisholm
28. “I’m looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I’m doing.” – Shirley Chisholm
29. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” – Shirley Chisholm
30. “In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.” – Shirley Chisholm
31. “In this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run for President, but that has never really been true.” – Shirley Chisholm
32. “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 prestige, 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
33. “It is not female egotism to say that the future of mankind may very well be ours to determine. It is a fact. The warmth, gentleness, and compassion that are part of the female stereo- type are positive human values, values that are becoming more and more important as the values of our world begin to shatter and fall from our grasp.” – Shirley Chisholm
34. “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
35. “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
36. “’Liberty and justice for all’ were beautiful words, but the ugly fact was that liberty and justice were only for white males.” – Shirley Chisholm
37. “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
38. “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.” – Shirley Chisholm
39. “Of my two ‘handicaps’, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.” – Shirley Chisholm
40. “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
41. “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
42. “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
43. “Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.” – Shirley Chisholm
44. “Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.” – Shirley Chisholm
45. “Rhetoric never won a revolution yet.” – Shirley Chisholm
46. “Richard Nixon won in forty-nine states by, for one thing, appealing to the inherent racism of the American people. Voters saw him – a Harris poll two months after the election showed this plainly – as the candidate who would put a stop to school busing and the encroachment of blacks and other minorities on white jobs.” – Shirley Chisholm
47. “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.” – Shirley Chisholm
48. “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
49. “Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.” – Shirley Chisholm
50. “Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else.” – Shirley Chisholm
51. “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
52. “That’s what’s wrong with the country. There are too many ‘good soldiers’ accepting too many bad decisions.” – Shirley Chisholm
53. “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
54. “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
55. “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It’s a girl.” – Shirley Chisholm
56. “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
57. “The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.” – Shirley Chisholm
58. “The most tragic error into which older people can fall is one that is common among educators and politicians. It is to use youth as scapegoats for the sins of their elders.” – Shirley Chisholm
59. “The next time a woman of whatever color, or a dark-skinned person of whatever sex aspires to be president, the way should be a little smoother because I helped pave it.” – Shirley Chisholm
60. “The one thing you’ve got going: your one vote.” – Shirley Chisholm
61. “The rest of the world sees through the sham, when we pour billions in foreign aid, which is really military assistance, into underdeveloped countries where the citizens continue to starve – as do millions of our own.” – Shirley Chisholm
62. “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
63. “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
64. “To label family planning and legal abortion programs ‘genocide’ is male rhetoric, for male ears.” – Shirley Chisholm
65. “Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.” – Shirley Chisholm
66. “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.” – Shirley Chisholm
67. “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
68. “We have been so patient and loyal and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.” – Shirley Chisholm
69. “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
70. “We must reject not only the stereotypes that others hold of us, but also the stereotypes that we hold of ourselves.” – Shirley Chisholm
71. “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
72. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” – Shirley Chisholm
73. “Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want.” – Shirley Chisholm
74. “Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.” – Shirley Chisholm
75. “You can’t argue with someone whose premises are completely different from yours, where there is not even an inch of common ground.” – Shirley Chisholm
76. “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.” – Shirley Chisholm