Notorious RBG Quotes

“Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability.” The analogy had special meaning in the constitutional context: In a series of cases triggered by Brown v. Board of Education, the court had said that laws that classified on the basis of race were almost always unconstitutional, or deserving “strict scrutiny.” The court had said in Reed that it wasn’t applying strict scrutiny, but then it seemed to do so anyway. Were laws that classified what men and women could do blatantly unconstitutional the way laws classifying by race were? RBG boldly urged the court to say they were.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“RBG gets out—a lot.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“To be like RBG in dissent, save your public anger for when there’s lots at stake and when you’ve tried everything else.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Legacy is a topic RBG won’t linger on, because it has a note of finality. But she will take stock. “In my life, what I find most satisfying is that I was a part of a movement that made life better, not just for women,” RBG says. “I think gender discrimination is bad for everyone, it’s bad for men, it’s bad for children.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“But RBG had a job to do, and she wasn’t done yet.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“When Scalia dissents, he pours gasoline on the majority, lights a match, and stomps on the ashes.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Scalia would bring the spoils of a recent hunting trip. “Scalia kills it and Marty cooks it,” said guest and former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson in 2007. “I never heard them talk about anything political or ideological, because there would be no point,”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Even their disagreements pleased RBG, in a way: They proved women had diverse views.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Your son stole the elevator!” “How far could he take it?” Marty replied.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Having read that the first year of a child’s life is when the personality is formed, Marty threw himself into caring for Jane while they were living in Oklahoma.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Mommy does the thinking and Daddy does the cooking.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I don’t see myself in the role of a great dissenter and I would much rather carry another mind even if it entails certain compromises,” RBG said at a roundtable on judging in 1985. “Of course there is a question of bedrock principle where I won’t compromise,” she added, but she had “learned a lot about other minds paying attention to people’s personalities in this job.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“She would have to be patient. She would have to be strategic. And maybe a little deaf.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“It turned out that even though RBG was asking the court to venture somewhere it had never gone, Murray had taken the first steps.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Damn, maybe I didn’t pluck her from obscurity. Maybe she plucked herself from obscurity.” He was right.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The world as it was had no room for her.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“People have found her somber, but it is sometimes because her humor is so deadpan dry that it escapes many.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Historically, one way women have lost power is by being nudged out the door to make room for someone else.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“There were similarities too. Brooklyn. Like the swaggering lyricist, this tiny Jewish grandmother who demanded patience as she spoke could also pack a verbal punch.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“But lately, RBG was tired of pretending not to hear.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“It is as though a special, zestful spice seasons my work and days,” RBG said after her first recovery. “Each thing I do comes with a heightened appreciation that I am able to do it.” That”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Not long before pop culture discovered RBG, liberal law professors and commentators began telling her the best thing she could do for what she cared about was to quit, so that President Barack Obama could appoint a successor. RBG, ardently devoted to her job, has mostly brushed that dirt off her shoulder. Her refusal to meekly shuffle off the stage has been another public, high-stakes act of defiance.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I have a last thank-you,” she said. “It is to my mother, Celia Amster Bader, the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon,” she said. “I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I think when it’s wrong,” Scalia says, “it should be destroyed.” But no one, probably least of all Supreme Court justices, changes her or his mind after being called an idiot. Actually changing the law means getting to five votes.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“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.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“For a while, her favorites were books about Greek and Norse mythology, and then she graduated to Nancy Drew. “This was a girl who was an adventurer, who could think for herself, who was the dominant person in her relationship with her young boyfriend,” RBG remembered happily.”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg