Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon

“I just try to do the good job that I have to the best of my ability, and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational. I just do the best I can.” —RBG, 2015

RBG often repeated her mother’s advice that getting angry was a waste of your own time. Even more often, she shared her mother-in-law’s counsel for marriage: that sometimes it helped to be a little deaf.

RBG quoted Martin Luther King directly: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” she said. But then she added her own words: “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”

RBG’s main concession to hitting her late seventies was to give up waterskiing.

“Dear,” said Evelyn, whom Kiki would soon call Mother, “I’m going to tell you the secret of a happy marriage: It helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” In her outstretched hand were a pair of earplugs.

“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.”

Although the legislature may distinguish between individuals on the basis of their need or ability, it is presumptively impermissible to distinguish on the basis of an unalterable identifying trait over which the individual has no control and for which he or she should not be disadvantaged by the law.

The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.

Only a woman’s body showed proof of having sex, and only women were punished for having it.

RBG firmly believed that for women to be equal, men had to be free.

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity,” she said simply. “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.”