Quote

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

Shirley Chisholm

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Politics
Powerful
Keep
Political
Power
Organizations
Formed
Organization

More quotes by Shirley Chisholm

Image
You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
The minorities have been confined to the city by a moat of bigotry.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
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
Image
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
Image
At present, our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
To label family planning and legal abortion programs genocide is male rhetoric, for male ears.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
... all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
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
Image
My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?
Shirley Chisholm
Image
Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
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
Image
We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.
Shirley Chisholm
Image
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
Image
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