Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenges and rejections one can face despite achieving a significant milestone like a law degree.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's quote reflects on her personal experience of being unable to find employment in a law firm in New York City despite having earned her law degree. It underscores the real-world struggles many individuals encounter when entering competitive fields, particularly those faced by women and minorities, and illustrates the importance of resilience and persistence in the face of adversity.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students facing job market challenges.
If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don't say, 'You don't know how to use the English language,' or 'How could you make that argument?' It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.
I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they're men or women.
The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.
A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.
My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.
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 don't share that belief.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.
Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.
Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hungerness bite, nor nakedness freeze thee
Every man needs a blind eye and a deaf ear, so when people applaud, you'll only hear half of it, and when people salute, you'll only see part of it. Believe only half the praise and half the criticism.
I know, perhaps as well as anyone, what depression means, and what it is to feel myself sinking lower and lower. Yet at the worst, when I reach the lowest depths, I have an inward peace which no pain or depression can in the least disturb. Trusting in Jesus Christ my Savior, there is still a blessed quietness in the deep caverns of my soul.
True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.
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