Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The enormous difference between fighting gender discrimination as opposed to race discrimination is good people immediately perceive race discrimination as evil and intolerable. But when I talked about sex-based discrimination, I got the response, 'What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men!

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Dissents speak to a future age.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In the '50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg