Top 70 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

Eight, as you know, is not a good number for a multi-member court.

I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

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 thought ‘Heller’ was a very bad decision.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

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

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.

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

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.

An operatic voice is like no other.

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

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

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

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.

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

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

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

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.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

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 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.

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

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

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

At my advanced age – I’m now an octogenarian – I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.

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!’

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

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.

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.

In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.

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

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.