1924-, American Social activist
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 – [Addiction]
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
Shirley Chisholm – [Prejudice]
Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.
Shirley Chisholm – [Service]
We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical 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. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.
Shirley Chisholm – [Multiculturalism]
You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
Shirley Chisholm – [Progress]