Shirley Chisholm: Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of...

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

real agreement school

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.

Shirley Chisholm

independent creative personality

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

rights house two

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.

Shirley Chisholm

differences skins justice

I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.

Shirley Chisholm

achievement america

Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power.

Shirley Chisholm

political powerful organization

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

attitude beautiful years

We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.

Shirley Chisholm

together justice class

Which is more like genocide, I have asked some of my black brothers - this, the way things are, or the conditions I am fighting for in which the full range of family planning services is available to women of all classes and colors, starting with effective contraception and extending to safe, legal terminations of undesired pregnancies at a price they can afford?

Shirley Chisholm

fighting brother pregnancy

One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian.

Shirley Chisholm

justice men thinking

Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

Shirley Chisholm

overlooked

Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.

Shirley Chisholm

numbers jobs men

I am not antiwhite, because I understand that white people, like black ones, are victims of a racist society. They are products of their time and place.

Shirley Chisholm

white justice people

Women know, and so do many men, that two or three children who are wanted, prepared for, reared amid love and stability, and educated to the limit of their ability will mean more for the future of the black and brown races from which they come than any number of neglected, hungry, ill-housed and ill-clothed youngsters. Pride in one's race, as will simple humanity, supports

Shirley Chisholm

pride mean children

I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.

Shirley Chisholm

discrimination mets black

I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That’s how I’d like to be remembered.

Shirley Chisholm

remembered guts

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality.

Shirley Chisholm

addiction reality needs

Of my two `handicaps,' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.

Shirley Chisholm

female black two

To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.

Shirley Chisholm

abortion males ears

We have been so patient and loyal ... and what has it gotten us? We want our full share now.

Shirley Chisholm

loyal patient want

Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws - to perpetuate injustice through inaction.