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

Shirley Chisholm

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Shirley Chisholm
Age: 80 †
Born: 1924
Born: November 30
Died: 2005
Died: January 1
American Politician
Politician
Brooklyn
New York
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
Shirley Anita Chisholm
Standing
Progress
Ideas
Whimpering
Make
Complainers
Implementing
Sidelines
Complaining
Inspiring

More quotes by Shirley Chisholm

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At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
Shirley Chisholm
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I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.
Shirley Chisholm
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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
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Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
Shirley Chisholm
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... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.
Shirley Chisholm
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As things are now, no one can tell to whom members of Congress are responsible, except that it does not often appear to be to the people. Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
Shirley Chisholm
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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
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As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.
Shirley Chisholm
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We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.
Shirley Chisholm
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I was well on the way to forming my present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gelded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own: their votes. And who benefits the most? The lawyers.
Shirley Chisholm
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I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.
Shirley Chisholm
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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
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It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.
Shirley Chisholm
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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
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The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
Shirley Chisholm
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My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?
Shirley Chisholm
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Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.
Shirley Chisholm
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Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.
Shirley Chisholm
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Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
Shirley Chisholm
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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