"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."
"I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. 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 think, that our society is not yet either just or free."
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Source: Shirley Chisholm (2010). “Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.19, Take Root Media
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"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."
"Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN."
"Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth."
"In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism."
"I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo."