Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

In truth, I did enjoy the benefits of a Harvard connection.

It is not like I have gone crazy, I just don’t want to take any chances. You never know what could happen.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

It is not women’s liberation, it is women’s and men’s liberation.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t – to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions – ‘Get over it!’

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

Dissents speak to a future age.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

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.

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

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

I thought ‘Heller’ was a very bad decision.

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

Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

I think Mozart’s operas ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

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.

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

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

The Democrats do fine in presidential elections; their problem is they can’t get out the vote in the midterm elections.

My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.

Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he’s very funny and very smart.

The label ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‘Iolanthe.’ It goes, ‘Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.’ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

Remember that before ‘Roe v. Wade’ was decided, there were four states that allowed abortion in the first trimester if that’s what the woman sought: New York, Hawaii, California, Alaska. Other states were shifting. And people were fighting over this issue in state legislatures.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‘A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.’

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I was a super once – an extra – in ‘Die Fledermaus,’ and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

Ever since my colorectal cancer in 1999, I have been followed by the N.I.H. That was very lucky for me because they detected my pancreatic cancer at a very early stage.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups.

After the pancreatic cancer, at first I went to N.I.H. every three months, then every four months, then every six months.

The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief.

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.’

It won’t happen. It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to see ‘Citizens United’ overruled.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

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.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

My mother graduated from high school at 15 and went to work to support the family because the eldest son went to college.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‘We, the people.’

My law school class in the late 1950s numbered over 500. That class included less than 10 women.

The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

I was a proponent of the ERA.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

I think we understand that for the Court to work well, we have to not only respect but genuinely like each other.

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. It wasn’t realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.

Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent.

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.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

I was tremendously fortunate to be alive and a lawyer, working at a university so I had more flexible hours, when the women’s movement was coming alive and when it became possible to argue successfully for a view of the equal protection clause that included women.

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.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‘Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.’

The Sixth Amendment secures to persons charged with crime the right to be tried by an impartial jury reflecting a fair cross-section of the community.