Quotes By 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.

Dissents speak to a future age.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

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.

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.

The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.

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.

Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent.

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

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

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

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.

You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.

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 would not like to be the only woman on the court.

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

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

It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.