Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

As you leave here and proceed along life's paths, try to leave tracks. Use the education you have received to help repair tears in your communities. Take part in efforts to move those communities, your nation, and our world closer to the conditions needed to ensure the health and well-being of your generation and generations following your own.

In Greek mythology, Pallas Athena was celebrated as the goddess of reason and justice.1 To end the cycle of violence that began with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, Athena created a court of justice to try Orestes, thereby installing the rule of law in lieu of the reign of vengeance.2 Recall also the biblical Deborah (from the Book of Judges).3 She was at the same time prophet, judge, and military leader. This triple-headed authority was exercised by only two other Israelites, both men: Moses and Samuel. People came from far and wide to seek Deborah’s judgment. According to the rabbis, Deborah was independently wealthy; thus she could afford to work pro bono.4 Even if its members knew nothing of Athena and Deborah, the U.S. legal establishment resisted admitting women into its ranks far too long.

In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.

Q: You have written, “To turn in a new direction, the court first had to gain an understanding that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could have the opposite effect.” The pedestal versus the cage. Has the court made that turn completely, or is there still more work to be done?

Think back to 1787. Who were 'we the people'? … They certainly weren't women … they surely weren't people held in human bondage. The genius of our Constitution is that over now more than 200 sometimes turbulent years that 'we' has expanded and expanded.

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

Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?

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.

about sex discrimination, remarked: “I have been typing this word, sex, sex, sex, over and over. Let me tell you, the audience you are addressing, the men you are addressing . . . the first association of that word is not what you are talking about. So I suggest that you use a grammar-book term. Use the word gender. It will ward off distracting associations.”5

So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.

"The women going to this law school, you will have many opportunities. What about the girl who is undereducated, drops out of school when she's a teenager and pregnant? Helping raise the level of all women is something I think women should care about.

Judicial independence in the United States strengthens ordered liberty, domestic tranquility, the rule of law, and democratic ideals. . . . It would be folly to squander this priceless constitutional gift to placate the clamors of benighted political partisans.26

She said, 'Dear, in every good marriage it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.' And I followed that advice in dealing not only with my dear spouse but in dealing even with my colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court."

also expanded to include women as well as racial and ethnic minorities. I was the beneficiary of the Nixon administration’s affirmative action effort when, in 1972, I was engaged by the Columbia University law faculty as the first woman ever to hold a tenured position there.

We are a nation made strong by people like you.