Shirley Chisholm Quotes:- Shirley Chisholm (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, and she represented New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983.
Inspirational Shirley Chisholm Quotes
We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us but also those that we have of ourselves.
Shirley Chisholm
You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
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
If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
Shirley Chisholm
I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being black, in the field of politics.
Shirley Chisholm
Famous Shirley Chisholm Quotes
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.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It’s a girl.
Shirley Chisholm
There is a 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
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
When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.
Shirley Chisholm
At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
Shirley Chisholm
Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.
Shirley Chisholm
Best Quotes by Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
George Wallace for some strange, unknown reason, he liked me. George Wallace came down to Florida, and he went all over Florida, and he said to the people, ‘If you all can’t vote for me, don’t vote for those oval-headed lizards. Vote for Shirley Chisholm!’ And that crashed my votes because they thought that I was in league with him to get votes.
Shirley Chisholm
America has the laws and the material resources it takes to ensure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.
Shirley Chisholm
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 would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.
Shirley Chisholm
I’m looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I’m doing.
Shirley Chisholm
My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always discuss for reasons of political expediency.
Shirley Chisholm
Powerful Quotes by Shirley Chisholm
Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want.
Shirley Chisholm
I am the people’s politician. If the day should ever come when the people can’t save me, I’ll know I’m finished.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Shirley Chisholm
Not only am I literally and figuratively the dark horse, but I’m also actually the poor horse. The only thing that I have going for me is my soul and my commitment to the American people.
Shirley Chisholm
