Top 25 Shirley Chisholm Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.’

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.