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

No matter what men think, abortion is a fact of life. Women have always had them; they always have and they always will. Are they going to have good ones or bad ones? Will the good ones be reserved for the rich, while the poor women go to quacks?

Women have learned to flex their political muscles. You got to flex that muscle to get what you want.

I am the people's politician. If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as odd and unfeminine.

Not only am I literally and figuratively the dark horse, I'm actually the poor horse. The only thing that I have going for me is my soul and my commitment to the American people.

Legal discrimination between the sexes is, in almost every instance, founded on outmoded views of society and the pre-scientific beliefs about psychology and physiology. It is time to sweep away these relics of the past and set further generations free of them.

My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.

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

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.

I ran because somebody had to do it first. In this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run for president, but that has never really been true.

I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being black, in the field of politics.

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.

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