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 would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.

Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.

In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.

Defeat should not be the source of discouragement, but a stimulus to keep plotting.

Women must become revolutionary. This cannot be evolution but revolution.

I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black...men are men.

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.

Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

We can’t solve problems for others. We can introduce them to the Lord.

The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.

Sometimes it's a bizarre, fairly cold, and horrifying thing to be a parent.

Any nose may ravage with impunity a rose.

I think that the 'laws of nature' are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws.

The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words.