Quotes by Shirley Chisholm

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.
– Shirley Chisholm
In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism.
– Shirley Chisholm
It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.
– Shirley Chisholm
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
– Shirley Chisholm
One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian.
– Shirley Chisholm
Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.
– Shirley Chisholm
The liberals in the House strongly resemble liberals I have known through the last two decades in the civil rights conflict. When it comes time to show on which side they will be counted, they excuse themselves.
– Shirley Chisholm
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.
– Shirley Chisholm
You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
– Shirley Chisholm
The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's a girl.'
– Shirley Chisholm
I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
– Shirley Chisholm
Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.
– Shirley Chisholm
At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
– Shirley Chisholm