Quotes from Shirley Chisholm

The rest of the world sees through the sham, when we pour billions in "foreign aid," which is really military assistance, into underdeveloped countries where the citizens continue to starve — as do millions of our own.

When I looked at the white people who were doing this, consciously or not, it made me angry because so many of them were baser, less intelligent, less talented than the people they were lording it over. But the whites were in control. We could do nothing about it. We had no power. That was the way society was. I perceived that this was the way it was meant to be: things were organized to keep those who were on top up there. The country was racist all the way through.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take. It is perhaps unrealistic to hope that I can help give this nation any of those things, but that is what I believe I have to try to do.

Richard Nixon won in forty-nine states by, for one thing, appealing to the inherent racism of the American people. Voters saw him—a Harris poll two months after the election showed this plainly—as the candidate who would put a stop to school busing and the encroachment of blacks and other minorities on white jobs

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair

There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price.

Will part of this nation rejoice at seeing the rest oppressed, and reward a leader who has cunningly manipulated its fears and prejudices? Or will a majority of voters insist on a leader . . . who will appeal to their birthright of idealism and their love of justice, instead of to their heritage of racism and special privilege?

The cost of living is first on all of our minds this important year. Yet the President [Nixon] has decided that it is a year for travel. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

When morality comes up against profit, it's seldom profit that loses.

What we need in this country today is leadership which has the courage to call for income tax reform to put the burden where it must be placed, on those who can afford to pay. (From Voices of Multicultural America)

I do not exaggerate; key votes have been lost because members whose votes were being counted on were in the gym).

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.