Quotessence
Home / Authors / Shirley Chisholm Books
Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm Books

American Politician

Related Quotes

“We Americans have come to feel that it is our mission to make the world free. We believe that we are always the good guys, everywhere-in Vietnam, in Latin America, wherever we go. We believe we are the good guys at home, too. When the Kemer Commission told white Amerca what black America had always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation's slums, maintain them and profit by them, white America would not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies of poverty and racism in our own country and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed as hypocrites in the eyes of the world when we talk about making other people free. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

PovertyRacismEqualityVietnamLatin AmericaFreeedom
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create image

“I know a lot of Americans who would be glad to settle for better bus service from their home to their jobs, or from poor neighborhoods to areas of the city where jobs are to be found. Repeated studies of riots in urban ghettos show that lack of adequate transportation was a big factor in the discontent and bitterness which caused riot conditions to erupt, but President Nixon's answer is to build a space shuttle or an SST with precious public funds, to serve a tiny elite of the population or to stimulate the economy of a state or region by creating massive and useless technological publicworks projects. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

PovertyEconomyTransportationRiotsRichard NixonNixonGhettos
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create image

“There must be a new coalition of all Americans - black, white, red, yellow and brown, rich and poor - who are no longer willing to allow their rights as human beings to be infringed upon by anyone else for any reason. We must join together to insist that this nation deliver on the promise it made nearly 200 years ago. That every man be allowed to be a man. I feel an incredible urgency that we must do it now. If time has not run out, it is surely, ominously short.”

GovernmentAmericaFreedomPowerRacismSexismCoalition
Book:Unbought and Unbossed
Create image

“The movement has, for the most part, been led by educated white middle-class women. There is nothing unusual about this. Reform as movements are usually led by the better educated and better off. But, if the women's movement is to be successful you must recognize the broad variety of women there are and the depth and range of their interests and concerns. To black and Chicana women, picketing a restricted club or insisting on the title Ms. are not burning issues. They are more concerned about bread-and-butter items such as the extension of minimum wage, welfare reform and day care. Further, they are not only women but women of color and thus are subject to additional and sometimes different pressures. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

FeminismFeminist MovementChicanaChicana History
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create image

“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. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).”

Human RightsAmerican PoliticsRace RelationsHave And Have Nots
Book:Unbought and Unbossed
Create image

“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. I ask–when is he going to make a "Trip to Peking" in regard to the basic problems facing us in the United States this year? He is willing to go halfway 'round the world--yet he doesn't have time to walk ten blocks from the White House in Washington and look at the lives people are living under Phase II. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

White HouseWashington DcRichard NixonNixon
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create image

“Mr. Nixon had said things like this: "If our cities are to be livable for the next generation, we can delay no long. er in launching new approaches to the problems that beset them and to the tensions that tear them apart." And he said, "When you cut expenditures for education, what you are doing is shortchanging the American future.” But frankly. I have never cared too much what people say. What I am interested in is what they do. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

Richard NixonNixon
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create 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.”

PeopleWayYearsWellsHas BeensStatesBeautifulUnitedAttitudeUnited StatesPromiseBenefitsVoteVictimValuableLawyerFraudValuable Things
Author:Shirley Chisholm
Create image

“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?”

WayFightingBlackClassConditionsColorBrotherSafeStartingAvailablePlanningRangePregnancyGenocideExtendingContraceptionFamily PlanningTermination
Book:Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition
Create image

“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 this view.”

KnowsMenMeanChildrenTwoWantedHumanityThreeBlackSimpleAbilityViewsNumbersRaceSupportPrideLimitsPreparedIllHungryEducatedBrownStabilityNeglectedYoungsters
Book:Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition
Create image