Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes That Are empathetic, brave and innovative

So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay.

And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.

Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions.

They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.

We live in an age in which the fundamental principles to which we subscribe - liberty, equality and justice for all - are encountering extraordinary challenges, ... But it is also an age in which we can join hands with others who hold to those principles and face similar challenges.

Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.

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.

Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing — to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.

I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew.

The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.

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.

The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

Generalizations about the "way women are" and estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.

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 would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.

Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not.

If we gave up our freedom as the price of security, we would no longer be the great nation that we are.

There is a Constitutional right to prostitution.

My mother told me two things constantly.

One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S.

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.

I have yet to see a death case among the dozen coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

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.

One thing that concerns me is that today's young women don't seem to care that we have a fundamental instrument of government that makes no express statement about the equal citizenship stature of men and women. They know there are no closed doors anymore, and they may take for granted the rights that they have.

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

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

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 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.

Whatever community organization, whether it's a women's organization, or fighting for racial justice ... you will get satisfaction out of doing something to give back to the community that you never get in any other way.

A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.

One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the impositions of the laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.

Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.

..the United States is subject to the scrutiny of a candid world ... what the United States does, for good or for ill, continues to be watched by the international community, in particular by organizations concerned with the advancement of the rule of law and respect for human dignity.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

I became a lawyer for selfish reasons. I thought I could do a lawyer’s job better than any other.

The Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

I do think that being the second [female Supreme Court Justice] is wonderful, because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary.

People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

Dissents speak to a future age.

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

If I resign any time this year, he [President Obama] could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. ... [A]nybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they're misguided.

Even the Declaration of Independence starts out all men are created equal, so I see my advocacy as part of an effort to make the equality principle everything the founders would have wanted it to be if they weren't held back by the society in which they lived and particularly the shame of slavery.

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.

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.

My own view, and I've said this many times, is as long as I can do the work full steam, I will stay on the Court. But when I feel myself slipping, when I slow down in my ability to write opinions with fair dispatch, when I forget the names of cases that I once could recite at the drop of a hat, I will know it is time for me to go.

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

It's great to be in the position of asking questions and not having to answer questions.

You're saying, no, state said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.

Work hard on each opinion, but once the case is decided, don't look back; go on to the next case and give it your all. It's not productive to worry about what's out and released, over and done. That's advice I now give to people new to the judging business.

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. And the stereotypical view of people of a world divided between home and child caring women and men as breadwinners, men representing the family outside the home.