Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

According to Ruth, Nabokov changed the way she read and wrote: “He used words to paint pictures. Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the reader.” Ruth remembers

"Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true."

-Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Fight for the things you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you. - Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice, New York Times

[I want to be remembered as] someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. To do something, as my colleague David Souter would say, outside myself. ‘Cause I’ve gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I’ve done for which I was not paid.

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.

If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me.

We children of public school age can do much to aid in the promotion of peace. We must try to train ourselves and those about us to live together with one another as good neighbors for this idea is embodied in the great new Charter of the United Nations. It is the only way to secure the world against future wars and maintain an everlasting peace.

At Cornell University, 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.

Cushman, who assigned her to research McCarthy’s assault on civil liberties, “wanted me to understand two things,” Ruth recalls. “One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on.

Be independent and be a lady.

They're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.

We should not be held back from pursuing our full talents, from contributing what we could contribute to the society, because we fit into a certain mould — because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination.

Speak you mind even if your voice shakes.

We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good.

Yet, as the numbers reveal, women in law, even today, are not entering a bias-free profession.