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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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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
Voice
Candidates
Refusal
White
Males
Presidency
Running
Despite
Ran
Political
Majors
Sheer
Feels
Accept
Hopeless
Giving
Capable
Odds
People
Office
Status
Accepting
Wealthy
Demonstrate

More quotes by Shirley Chisholm

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The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
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You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
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At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
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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.
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To label family planning and legal abortion programs genocide is male rhetoric, for male ears.
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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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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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Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.
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.
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... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.
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.
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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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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
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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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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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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.
Shirley Chisholm
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The difference between de jure and de facto segregation is the difference between open, forthright bigotry and the shamefaced kind that works through unwritten agreements between real estate dealers, school officials, and local politicians.
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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Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
Shirley Chisholm
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Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.
Shirley Chisholm