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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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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
States
Privilege
Reason
Available
Right
Health
Real
System
Never
Seen
State
Scandalous
American
Conceived
Care
Afford

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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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I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.
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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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Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.
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That's what's wrong with the country. There are too many 'good soldiers' accepting too many bad decisions.
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Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.
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We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.
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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.
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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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Some members of Congress are among the best actors in the world.
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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.
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Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.
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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.
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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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Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.
Shirley Chisholm
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Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
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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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It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.
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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.
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