Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

If she is agile — if she welcomes and responds to questions that may uncover what is in the decisionmakers’ minds, while remaining alert to opportunities to use a question as a springboard to advance a key point.

Our system of justice is surely richer for the diversity of background and experience of its judges. It was poorer when nearly all of its participants were cut from the same mold.

I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.

exuberant presence of Justice Scalia, the Court is “a paler place.” The two cases at the top of Justice Ginsburg’s most

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."

Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.

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. I dissent.

It helps sometimes to be a little deaf (in marriage and in) every workplace, including the good job I have now.

We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman.

Justice O'Connor had set the model. She had breast surgery and she was on the bench nine days after her surgery. She said, 'Now, Ruth, have your chemotherapy on a Friday. That way, you have the weekend to get over it'

When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?’ and my answer is: ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.

Another often-asked question when I speak in public: “Do you have some good advice you might share with us?” Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. “In every good marriage,” she counseled, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through fifty-six years of a marital partnership nonpareil. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court of the United States. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.

Let me try to state in a nutshell how I view the work of judging. My approach, I believe, is neither liberal nor conservative. Rather, it is rooted in the place of the judiciary, of judges, in our democratic society. The Constitution’s preamble speaks first of we, the people, and then of their elected representatives. The judiciary is third in line and it is placed apart from the political fray so that its members can judge fairly, impartially, in accordance with the law, and without fear about the animosity of any pressure group. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, “The mission of judges is to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.” I would add that the judge should carry out that function without fanfare, but with due care. She should decide the case before her without reaching out to cover cases not yet seen. She should be ever mindful as judge. And then Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo said, “Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.”