28 Powerful Shirley Chisholm Quotes That Will Inspire You

“I am and always will be a catalyst for change.” - Shirley Chisholm. Here are 28 Powerful Shirley Chisholm Quotes That Will Inspire You.

Shirley Chisholm Quotes

1. “Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

2. “There is a good deal of evidence that the United States is moving to the right, and that the main force behind the movement is a resurgence, in a new form, of racial prejudice.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

3. “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.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

4. “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

5. “Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

6. “We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

7. “Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm Quotes

8. “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. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

9. “That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

10. “Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

11. “I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo… to give a voice to the people the major candidates were ignoring. What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

12. “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 ...”
-- Shirley Chisholm

13. “My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

14. “Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm Quotes

15. “At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

16. “We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

17. “Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

18. “Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

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

20. “As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity on both counts.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

21. “You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm Quotes

22. “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

23. “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It's a girl.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

24. “Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

25. “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

26. “Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

27. “Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them.”
-- Shirley Chisholm

28. “Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. List to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.”
-- Shirley Chisholm