Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

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.

Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.

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

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.

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.

The court generally moves in small steps rather than in one giant step.

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

The experience I don’t want to see repeated occurred in ‚Bush v. Gore.‘ The Court divided five to four. There were four separate dissents, and that confused the press. In fact, some of the reporters announced that the decision was seven-two. There was no time to get together.

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

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

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

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.

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.

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

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

The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

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.

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.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.

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

I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups. And I do the Canadian Air Force exercises almost every day.

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

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

The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.

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.

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

In 2015, an opera opened about me and Justice Antonin Scalia. It’s called ‚Scalia/Ginsburg.‘ The composer, Derrick Wang, has degrees in music from Harvard and Yale. Enrolled in law school, he was reading dueling opinions by me and Justice Scalia and decided he could compose an appealing comic opera from them.

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

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

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.

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

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

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.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

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.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

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.

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.

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 will do this job as long as I feel that I can do it full steam.

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.‘

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

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

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

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.

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

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women’s organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man’s world.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law, and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would take.