I stand before you today to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates simply because he is not white or because she is not a male.
Interpretation
This quote challenges racial and gender biases in politics, advocating for equality in candidate selection.
Shirley Chisholm's quote emphasizes the importance of rejecting prejudice based on race or gender in the political arena. By asserting that the American people are capable of voting for qualified candidates regardless of their race or gender, Chisholm advocates for a more inclusive political landscape that recognizes the value of diversity and promotes equal opportunities for all individuals in leadership roles.
In practice
During a women’s rights rally.
I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free.
The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'
I know that millions of Americans from all walks of life agree with me that leadership does not mean putting the ear to the ground to follow public opinion, but to have the vision of what is necessary and the courage to make it possible.
Of course 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.
I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.
America is composed of all kinds of people - part of the difficulty in our nation today is due to the fact that we are not utilising the abilities and the talents of other brown and black peoples and females that have something to bring to the creativity and the rejuvenation and the revitalisation of this country.
The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
Through discipline, and determination one can change anything and everything about him - his habits, his outlook on life
The Revolution did not assume a socialist nature because of support from the U.S.S.R.; it was the other way around: support from the U.S.S.R. was produced by the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. To such a degree, that when the U.S.S.R. disappears, Cuba keeps on being socialist.
I am for lifting everyone off the social bottom. In fact, I am for doing away with the social bottom altogether.
Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.
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