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Shirley Chisholm Quotes

1924–2005 United States

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (30 November 1924 – 1 January 2005) was an American politician, educator and author.

United States
Activists
Baptists
Educators
Feminists

Random Shirley Chisholm quote

20 quotes

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

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

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

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

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

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

Anthology : Quotations and Sayings of People of Color (1973)

We must reject the thought of Saint Paul who said, “let the woman marry in silence."

Speech (1972)

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.

One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

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.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

Few, if any Americans, are free of the psychological wounds imposed by racism and antifeminism.

Speech (1972)

Discrimination against women in politics is particularly unjust, because no political organization I have seen could function without women.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, and Sojourner Truth were not evolutionaries, they were revolutionaries, just as many of the young women in today’s society and more and more women must join their rank.

Speech (1972)

Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time. Even when the problems it ignores build up to crises and erupt in strikes, riots, and demonstrations, it has not moved. Its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

Apparently launching those new [domestic social] programs can be delayed for a while, after all. It seems we have to get some missiles launched first.

Speech in Congress (1969)

The income for domestics in this country. Domestic workers. Every year we had the increase in income domestic workers never, never fit into the scale of things.

Shirley Chisholm: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2021)

Some other black political leaders scolded me. I told them that no one has a right to call himself a leader unless he dares to lead.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

Two more years of fantastic waste in the Defense Department and of penny pinching on social programs

Speech in Congress (1969)

The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles, and stereotypes.

Speech (1972)

A sales tax is the enemy of the poor person. It is the enemy of the elderly couple who live on fixed income. And it is the enemy of the everyday American consumer, poor or not.

Speech at Newark College of Engineering (1972)

different women view different segments of the women's movement agenda as priority items.

Speech to National Women's Political Caucus (1973)

I was well on the way to forming my present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States; it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gelded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own: their votes. And who benefits the most? The lawyers.

Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Shirley Chisholm (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.