Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an American lawyer and jurist who is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She spent a lifetime flourishing in the face of adversity before being appointed a Supreme Court justice, where she successfully fought against gender discrimination and unified the liberal block of the court. Powerful Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes will give you the inspiration you need to fight for what’s right and continue to make a difference.
If you’re searching for famous quotations about life that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of Charles Krauthammer quotes, best Ruby Bridges quotes, and top Angela Davis quotes.
Most Famous Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 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
You can’t have it all, all at once. Who man or woman has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
You can disagree without being disagreeable. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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
A gender line helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, We, the people. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I don’t say women’s rights I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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 the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations. They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
My mother was very strong about my doing well in school and living up to my potential. Two things were important to her and she repeated them endlessly. One was to be a lady, and that meant conduct yourself civilly, don’t let emotions like anger or envy get in your way. And the other was to be independent, which was an unusual message for mothers of that time to be giving their daughters. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
At my advanced age I’m now an octogenarian I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity? Ruth Bader Ginsburg
It is not women’s liberation, it is women’s and men’s liberation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune. Ruth Bader Ginsbur
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. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The enormous difference between fighting gender discrimination as opposed to race discrimination is good people immediately perceive race discrimination as evil and intolerable. But when I talked about sex based discrimination, I got the response, What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men! Ruth Bader Ginsburg
On the whole, we think of our consumers other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We may be anxious to reduce crime, but we should remember that in our system of justice, the presumption of innocence is prime, and the law cannot apply one rule to Joe who is a good man, and another to John, who is a hardened criminal. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I remember envying the boys long before I even knew the word feminism, because I liked shop better than cooking or sewing. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
It’s a facet of the gay rights movement that people don’t think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s head and master rule, that the husband was head and master of the house. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Never underestimate the power of a girl with a book. Ruth Bader Ginsberg
I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
According to Ruth, Nabokov changed the way she read and wrote He used words to paint pictures. Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the reader. Ruth remembers. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I became a lawyer for selfish reasons. I thought I could do a lawyer’s job better than any other. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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
Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Fight for the things you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you. Ruth Bader Ginsberg
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. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We children of public school age can do much to aid in the promotion of peace. 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. Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now ancient days, were of the same race and sex. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Cushman, who assigned her to research McCarthy’s assault on civil liberties, wanted me to understand two things, Ruth recalls. One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Dissents speak to a future age. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I was a super once an extra in Die Fledermaus, and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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 mould because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who do’t share that belief. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
They’re not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it’s pervasive. It’s not as though, well, there’s this little Federal sphere and it’s only a tax question. It’s as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You’re saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the 80s and 90s. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Yet, as the numbers reveal, women in law, even today, are not entering a bias free profession. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
My mother was very strong about my doing well in school and living up to my potential. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
And I give you this picture because it fairly captures our nearly fifty year happy marriage, during which I have offered up an astonishing number of foolish pronouncements with absolute assurance, and Ruth, with only limited rancor, has ignored almost every one. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The experience I don’t want to see repeated occurred in Bush v. Gore. The Court divided five to four. There were four separate dissents, and that confused the press. In fact, some of the reporters announced that the decision was seven two. There was no time to get together. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance ones ability to persuade. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
One is that we were betraying our most fundamental values, and, two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Once asked how we could be friends, given our disagreement on lots of things, Justice Scalia answered I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Judges do read the newspapers and are affected, not by the weather of the day, as distinguished constitutional law professor Paul Freund once said, but by the climate of the era. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The Secret Garden and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Of all the March sisters, Ruth loved the lively independent intellectual Jo the best. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In every good marriage, she counseled, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Explaining why she entered the race, Belva Lockwood wrote in a letter to her future running mate, Marietta Stow We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor equal respect until we command it. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Sally Reed, having lost her only child, sought to take charge of her son’s few belongings. She applied to the probate court to be appointed administrator of Richard’s death estate. The boy’s father, Cecil Reed, later applied for the same appointment. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
