Top 205 Quotes & Sayings by Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Page 3

I really concentrate on what's on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can.

Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always - well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was.

I thought 'Heller' was a very bad decision.

There are some women I definitely would not want to succeed me... but a man like David Souter, that would be great.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

Whatever final judgment awaits 'Bush v. Gore' in the annals of history, I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair.

I always ask my law clerks, in addition to reading all the briefs, including all the amici briefs, that if there's a good law review article, they should bring it to me.

There are some singers that know exactly when to go, and others hang on much too long and that is the same, that is the same with judges.

I think some of my colleagues' spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

There is a Constitutional right to prostitution.

A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.

Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.

Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment.

Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

I do think that being the second [female Supreme Court Justice] is wonderful, because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary.

One thing that concerns me is that today's young women don't seem to care that we have a fundamental instrument of government that makes no express statement about the equal citizenship stature of men and women. They know there are no closed doors anymore, and they may take for granted the rights that they have.

The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting.

I didn't change the Constitution; the equality principle was there from the start. I just was an advocate for seeing its full realization.

If I resign any time this year, he [President Obama] could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. ... [A]nybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they're misguided.

The irony and tragedy is any woman of means can have a safe abortion somewhere in the United States. But women lacking the wherewithal to travel can't. There is no big constituency out there concerned about access restrictions on poor women.

Generalizations about the "way women are" and estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.

There are just a host of problems born by the electronic age. Things we couldn't even conceive of. I was amused by the analogy that Justice Scalia made in a case about a GPS tracker so you don't know that's being done to your car, is that a violation of your right to protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. So Justice Scalia imagines a constable clinging to the bottom of a carriage as it went on its way, so there was some notion that this similar: there is an official eye that's on you, but you don't know about it. Yes, there are all kinds of challenges.

Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.

If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S.

Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent.

Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing — to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.

Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.

Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.

It's great to be in the position of asking questions and not having to answer questions.

Promoting active liberty does not mean allowing the majority to run roughshod over minorities. It calls for taking special care that all groups have a chance to fully participate in society and the political process.

I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.

I think our system is being polluted by money.

If I had any talent God could give me, I would be a great diva.

Adult women are able to make decisions about their own lives' course no less than men are.

I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.

The Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.

In my view, if the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that Amendment was very important when the nation was new, it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms but it was for one purpose only, and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.

Congress could always stop the President if Congress thinks that what the President has done exceeds the President's authority or is just wrong for the United States.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn't a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn't be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge.

When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous.

We should learn ... to do our best for the sake of our communities and for the sake of those for whom we pave the way.

So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.

Work for the things that you care about.

The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

My dissenting opinions, like my briefs, are intended to persuade. And sometimes one must be forceful about saying how wrong the Court's decision is.

In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.

If we gave up our freedom as the price of security, we would no longer be the great nation that we are.

No one who is in business for profit can foist his or her beliefs on a workforce that includes many people who do not share those beliefs.

Even the Declaration of Independence starts out all men are created equal, so I see my advocacy as part of an effort to make the equality principle everything the founders would have wanted it to be if they weren't held back by the society in which they lived and particularly the shame of slavery.

I conceived of myself in large part as a teacher. There wasn't a great understanding of gender discrimination. People knew that race discrimination was an odious thing, but there were many who thought that all the gender-based differentials in the law operated benignly in women's favor. So my objective was to take the Court step by step to the realization, in Justice Brennan's words, that the pedestal on which some thought women were standing all too often turned out to be a cage.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.

The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does. ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.

We live in an age in which the fundamental principles to which we subscribe - liberty, equality and justice for all - are encountering extraordinary challenges, ... But it is also an age in which we can join hands with others who hold to those principles and face similar challenges.

Whatever community organization, whether it's a women's organization, or fighting for racial justice ... you will get satisfaction out of doing something to give back to the community that you never get in any other way.

Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not.

...The Court ...[recognizes]...the persistence of racial inequality and a majority's acknowledgement of Congress's authority to act affirmatively, not only to end discrimination, but also to counteract discrimination's lingering effects. Those effects, reflective of a system of racial caste [legal segregation and discrimination] only recently ended, are evident in our work places, markets, and neighborhoods. Job applicants with identical resumes, qualifications, and interview styles still experience different receptions, depending on their race.