Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes - 30 quotes

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) was an influential American jurist and a pioneering advocate for gender equality. She was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. She excelled academically, earning her B.A. from Cornell University and attending both Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School,... show more

quote icon Abortion prohibition by the State, however, controls women and denies them full autonomy and full equality with men.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling. If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon It was always recognition that one thing that conspicuously distinguishes women from men is that only women become pregnant; and if you subject a woman to disadvantageous treatment on the basis of her pregnant status, which was what was happening to Captain Struck, you would be denying her equal treatment under the law…

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon The Constitution’s preamble speaks first of we, the people, and then of their elected representatives. The judiciary is third in line and it is placed apart from the political fray so that its members can judge fairly, impartially, in accordance with the law, and without fear about the animosity of any pressure group. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, “The mission of judges is to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon 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. I dissent.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon 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.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Nine, nine... There have been nine men there for a long, long time, right? So why not nine women?

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would, would take. I think the answer to that problem is in Congress' lap. People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say "we want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon 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.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon People ask me sometimes... 'When will there be enough women on the court?' And my answer is, 'When there are nine.' People are shocked, but there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Generally change in our society is incremental. Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself, something to repair tears in your community, something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon So the brunt of all these restrictive laws is on poor women. Not only if they can't pay the plane fare or the bus fare – they can't afford to take days off from work to go.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Think back to 1787. Who were 'we the people'? … They certainly weren't women … they surely weren't people held in human bondage. The genius of our Constitution is that over now more than 200 sometimes turbulent years that 'we' has expanded and expanded.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon 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.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Inevitably, the shape of the law on gender-based classification and reproductive autonomy indicates and influences the opportunity women will have to participate as men's full partners in the nation's social, political, and economic life.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Overall, the Court's Roe position is weakened, I believe, by the opinion's concentration on a medically approved autonomy idea, to the exclusion of a constitutionally based sex-equality perspective. I understand the view that for political reasons the reproductive autonomy controversy should be isolated from the general debate on equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities for women and men.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon I can't imagine what this place would be - I can't imagine what the country would be - with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be - I don't even want to contemplate that.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon He [Trump] is a faker...He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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quote icon Imagine if all nine justices announced their presidential preferences in the advance of each election. Imagine further that they took sides in primary battles, too. It's folly to pretend that judges and justices have no political views, or that their legal views are entirely separate from their judicial philosophies. But there is value in at least formal neutrality in these most partisan battles. Any smart lawyer - or smart citizen - can see that. So, in short order, will Ginsburg.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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