RUTH BADER GINSBURG WISDOM AND MORE

[Barbara]

"I didn't change the Constitution; the equality principle was there from the start. I just was an advocate for seeing its full realization."

[Barbara]

"They have never been a 13-year-old girl." -- After RBG's male colleagues appeared indifferent about a girl's strip-search by school administrators.

[Barbara]

"When a state severely limits access to safe and legal {abortion] procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners ... at great risk to their health and safety.”

[Barbara]

“Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived.”

[Barbara]

“It bothers me when people say to make it to the top of the tree you have to give up a family.”

[Barbara]

“Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don’t burn your bridges. Don’t be afraid to take charge, think about what you want, then do the work, but then enjoy what makes you happy, bring along your crew, have a sense of humor.”

[Barbara]

"I pray that I may be all that [my mother] would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons."

[Barbara]

"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes."

[Barbara]

“My dissenting opinions, like my briefs, are meant to persuade. And sometimes one must be forceful about saying how wrong the Court is.”

[Barbara]

“We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman.”

[Barbara]

“Justices continue to think and can change. I am ever hopeful that if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow.”

[Barbara]

“We should not be held back from pursuing our full talents, from contributing what we could contribute to the society, because we fit into a certain mold ― because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination.”

[Barbara]

"Justice O'Connor had set the model. She had breast surgery and she was on the bench nine days after her surgery. She said, 'Now, Ruth, have your chemotherapy on a Friday. That way, you have the weekend to get over it'"

You gotta admire these women! 👍🌸🍀

[Barbara]

"Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination."

[Barbara]

"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."

[Barbara]

"Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked."

[Barbara]

“The way to stop discrimination on race is to stop discriminating on race.”

[Barbara]

"I think our system is being polluted by money."

[Barbara]

“In my life, what I find most satisfying is that I was part of a movement that made life better, not just for women … gender discrimination is bad for everyone.”

[Barbara]

"The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."

[Barbara]

"[My husband] Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always - well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was."

[Barbara]

"I think back to the days when—I don’t know who it was—when I think Truman suggested the possibility of a woman as a justice. Someone said we have these conferences and men are talking to men and sometimes we loosen our ties, sometimes even take off our shoes. The notion was that they would be inhibited from doing that if women were around. I don’t know how many times I’ve kicked off my shoes."

[Barbara]

"At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him."

[Barbara]

“For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show...As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.”

[Barbara]

"We should not be held back from pursuing our full talents, from contributing what we could contribute to the society, because we fit into a certain mold ― because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination."

[Barbara]

"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."

[Barbara]

“I remember envying the boys long before I even knew the word 'feminism,' because I liked shop better than cooking or sewing.”

[Barbara]

"There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I," she added with a smile, "am very much alive."

[Barbara]

“I am an originalist. I think we’re constantly forming a more perfect Union, which is what the Founders intended.”

[Barbara]

“Never underestimate the power of a girl with a book.”

[Barbara]

RBG about her friend Antonin Scalia, with whom she often disagreed about judicial matters.

"From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies,"


Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia

[Barbara]

Speaking of her wonderful husband Marty, RBG said, "He was my clipping service with The New York Times and The [Washington] Post." I miss him every morning, because I have no one to go through the paper and pick out what I should read."

[Barbara]

“I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s.”

[Barbara]

“In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other. So, for example, when Marty was intent on becoming a partner in a New York law firm in five years, during that time, I was the major caretaker of our home and child. But when I started up the ACLU Women's Rights Project, Marty realized how important that work was."

[Barbara]

RBG's comment about her husband Marty when she was battling cancer: "He stayed with me in the hospital sleeping on an uncomfortable couch despite his bad back. And I knew that someone was there who really cared about me and would make sure that things didn't go wrong."

[Barbara]

About going on after her cancer treatment: "The work is really what saved me, because I had to concentrate on reading the brief, doing a draft of an opinion, and I knew that had to get done. So I had to get past whatever my aches and pains were. Just do the job."

[Barbara]

An amusing quote from Marty Ginsburg:

"I learned very early on in our marriage that Ruth was a fairly terrible cook and, for lack of interest, unlikely to improve, Out of self-preservation, I decided I had better learn to cook because Ruth, to quote her precisely, was expelled from the kitchen by her food-loving children nearly a quarter-century ago."

[Barbara]

RBG talking about her husband Marty, who lobbied to get her on Clinton's list of Supreme Court nominees.

"I betray no secret in reporting that, without him, I would not have gained a seat on the Supreme Court."

[Barbara]

When Marty Ginsburg was losing his battle with cancer, he wrote his wife Ruth Bader Ginsburg that, aside from parents and children, "you are the only person I have loved in my life. ... I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago."

[Barbara]

"We must try to train ourselves and those about us to live together with one another as good neighbors for this idea is embodied in the great new Charter of the United Nations. It is the only way to secure the world against future wars and maintain an everlasting peace.”

[Barbara]

About wonderful Marty Ginsberg:

"There was one day during [the] colon cancer bout when I was getting a blood transfusion, and Marty saw that something was very wrong and he immediately yanked the needle out of me. It turned out that there was a mismatch not in the type of blood but in some antigen. I might not have lived it if he hadn't been there."

[Barbara]

The movie 'On the Basis of Sex', about a gender-discrimination case featured Ruth and her husband Martin. Ruth noted that actor Armie Hammer "did her husband justice, but was definitely taller than the real Martin."

[Barbara]

"We should learn ... to do our best for the sake of our communities and for the sake of those for whom we pave the way."

[Barbara]

"He is a faker," Ginsburg said about Trump. "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... "

[Barbara]

“I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s.”

[Barbara]

"Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped my dreams come true."

[Barbara]

Talking about the decorative collars worn by women justices RBG said:

“You know, the standard robe is made for a man because it has a place for the shirt to show, and the tie. So I and Sandra Day O’Connor, [the first female Supreme Court Justice] thought it would be appropriate if we included as part of our robe something typical of a woman.”

[Barbara]

RBG's opinion of Donald Trump: “He’s a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”

[Barbara]

“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.”

[Barbara]

In the 2020 election, Ginsburg called the presumptive GOP nominee a "faker," chastised his refusal to release his tax returns, and publicly said she couldn't "imagine" what the U.S. would be like with Trump in the Oval Office.