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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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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
Protect
Designed
Mother
Male
Today
Late
Males
Great
Rights
Pity
Undone
Work
Start
Wrote
Founding
White
Complete
Counts
Black
Constitution
Fathers
Father
Citizens
Mothers
Left

More quotes by Shirley Chisholm

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My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?
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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.
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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.
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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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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Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
Shirley Chisholm
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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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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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That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.
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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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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... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.
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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As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.
Shirley Chisholm
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To label family planning and legal abortion programs genocide is male rhetoric, for male ears.
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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The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
Shirley Chisholm
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I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.
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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Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.
Shirley Chisholm