Quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I often quoted the lines of Sarah Grimke, one of two wonderful sisters from South Carolina, and they said to legislators in the mid-1900s, I ask no favor for my sex, all I ask of my brethren is that they take their feet from off our necks.

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.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

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.

Work for the things that you care about.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing — to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn't - to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia's favorite expressions - 'Get over it!'

It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,' but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting.

I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups. And I do the Canadian Air Force exercises almost every day.

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

No one who is in business for profit can foist his or her beliefs on a workforce that includes many people who do not share those beliefs.

We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

I was a proponent of the ERA.

In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.