Shirley Chisholm Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I am and always will be a catalyst for change.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.