Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.
You can disagree without being disagreeable.
Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.
You can't have it all, all at once. Who - man or woman - has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.
Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.
Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.
We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.'
If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.
A gender line... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.
I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.
So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.
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.
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.
My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.
I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.
I can't imagine what this place would be - I can't imagine what the country would be - with Donald Trump as our president.
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.
It's a facet of the gay rights movement that people don't think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn't until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana's 'head and master rule,' that the husband was head and master of the house.
If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.
It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.
The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.
We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.
The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.
I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.
How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.
When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.
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.
America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus' famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.
All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.
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!'
Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny.
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.
Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?
Dissents speak to a future age.
The Sixth Amendment secures to persons charged with crime the right to be tried by an impartial jury reflecting a fair cross-section of the community.
You can't have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.
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.
People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.
It is not like I have gone crazy, I just don't want to take any chances. You never know what could happen.
I really concentrate on what's on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can.
I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.
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.
When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.
I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations... They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.
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.
I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups. And I do the Canadian Air Force exercises almost every day.
Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.
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.
