Shirley Chisholm Quotes

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.

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

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

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

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

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.

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.

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.

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

I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black…men are men.

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.

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.

I have never cared too much what people say. What I am interested in is what they do.

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.

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

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

Don’t list to those who say YOU CAN’T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.