Ruth Bader Ginsburg

If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.

A gender line... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

There are some women I definitely would not want to succeed me... but a man like David Souter, that would be great.

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.

I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

In the '50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

I always ask my law clerks, in addition to reading all the briefs, including all the amici briefs, that if there's a good law review article, they should bring it to me.

The Sixth Amendment secures to persons charged with crime the right to be tried by an impartial jury reflecting a fair cross-section of the community.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.

There's nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does. ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.

Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors.

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.

It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.

Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.