24 Potent Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes on Equality, Relationships, and Living Up To One’s Potential

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Excerpt: 24 potent and insightful Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes that will help you remember and carry on the legacy of “The Notorious RBG.”

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Introduction: The Notorious R.B.G.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), the tireless and pointed 107th Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, lost her battle to pancreatic cancer and died on September 18th, 2020. And as tragic as the loss has come, what an incredible life worth celebrating did she live. Not only did she become the second woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, but did so in spite of a tremendously long list of challenges and adversities.

From the loss of her mother the day before she graduated from high school, to facing a class of over 500 men and only seven other women when she attended Harvard Law School, to juggling her roles as being a wife and a mother and a law student and a caregiver to her husband’s struggle with cancer while they were both in law school—she by no means was cut any breaks along her road to the top. There seems to have always been a struggle for RBG throughout her life and career and what’s most impressive to me is that not only did she continue to fight back time and time again, but she continued to excel time and time again.

Even in her later years, up until her 2018 term as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ginsburg had not missed a single day of oral arguments. Not even when she was undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, or after surgery for colon cancer, or the day after her husband passed away in 2010—and this was over the span of around 25 years. An impressive track record for anyone in any line of work. All of this and without even a mention to the impact she had in the courtroom! And it’s there that she won many landmark, groundbreaking cases.

She was a champion of justice and a trailblazer who impacted the lives of countless people. And for those who are just learning about “The Notorious R.B.G“ now, may this post and its insight find you well. Below, you will find our list of 24 Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes that will give you a closer look into the mind of this incredible woman. May she rest in peace and may her legacy live on through you as you absorb her words. If there are any quotes or insights that stand out to you, let us know in the comment section at the end. Otherwise, and without further ado, enjoy!

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The List: 24 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes on Equality, Relationships, and Living Up To One’s Potential

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6 Quotes To Help You Get To Know RBG:

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“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, My Own Words

“RBG has never been one to shrink from a challenge. People who think she is hanging on to this world by a thread underestimate her. RBG’s main concession to hitting her late seventies was to give up waterskiing.”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“A conversation with her is a special pleasure because there are no words that are not preceded by thoughts.”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“One of the first things many clerks hear from RBG is that the most important job requirement is that they treat her two secretaries well. ‘There was one law clerk applicant who came to interview with me—top rating at Harvard—who treated my secretaries with disdain,’ RBG recalled. ‘As if they were just minions. So that is one very important thing—how you deal with my secretaries. They are not hired help. As I tell my clerks, ‘if push came to shove, I could do your work—but I can’t do without my secretaries.’”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“’If my opinion runs more than twenty pages,’ she said, ‘I am disturbed that I couldn’t do it shorter.’ The mantra in her chambers is ‘Get it right and keep it tight.’ She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion’s opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. ‘If you can say it in plain English, you should,’ RBG says. Going through ‘innumerable drafts,’ the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. ‘I think that law should be a literary profession,’ RBG says, ‘and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft.’”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of 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,’ she said simply. ‘It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.’”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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7 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes on Equality:

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“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, Reuters

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Every Day Power

“She imagined a world where men transformed themselves alongside women and where sexual and reproductive freedom was grounded in women’s equality, and then she worked to make it real.”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“She likes to quote the opening words of the Constitution: ‘We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union.’ Beautiful, yes, but as she always points out, ‘we the people’ originally left out a lot of people. ‘It would not include me,’ RBG said, or enslaved people, or Native Americans. Over the course of the centuries, people left out of the Constitution fought to have their humanity recognized by it. RBG sees that struggle as her life’s work.”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Feminism… I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‘Free to be You and Me.’ Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Makers

“I think that men and women, shoulder to shoulder, will work together to make this a better world. Just as I don’t think that men are the superior sex, neither do I think women are. I think that it is great that we are beginning to use the talents of all of the people, in all walks of life, and that we no longer have the closed doors that we once had.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“‘Ruth Bader Ginsburg cannot be called a liberal or a conservative; she has proved herself too thoughtful for such labels,‘ the president said. ‘Having experienced discrimination,’ he added, ‘she devoted the next twenty years of her career to fighting it and making this country a better place for our wives, our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters.’ RBG would have added, ‘And our husbands, our fathers, our brothers, and our sons.’”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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5 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes on Relationships:

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“There’s full marriage and then there’s sort of skim milk marriage.”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of 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, Town & Country Magazine

“Another often-asked question when I speak in public: ‘Do you have some good advice you might share with us?‘ Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. ‘In every good marriage,’ she counseled, ‘it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.’ I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through fifty-six years of a marital partnership nonpareil. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court of the United States. 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, My Own Words

“Marty [her husband] 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, MSNBC

“6/17/10 My dearest Ruth—You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!! I will be in JH Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life, and whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you a jot less.” — Handwritten letter from Marty [her husband] to Ruth”

Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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3 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes from On The Basis Of Sex Movie (2018)

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Judge: “The word ‘woman’ does not appear even once in the US Constitution.“

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Nor does the word ‘freedom,’ Your Honor.“

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), On The Basis Of Sex

“We’re not asking you to change the country. That’s already happened without any court’s permission. We’re asking you to protect the right of the country to change.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), On The Basis Of Sex

“A generation ago, my students would have been arrested for indecency for wearing the clothes that they do. Sixty-five years ago, it would have been unimaginable that my daughter would aspire to a career. And a hundred years ago, I would not have the right to stand before you. There are a hundred and seventy-eight laws that differentiate on the basis of sex. Count them. The government did the favor of compiling them for you. And while you’re at it, I urge you to read them. They’re obstacles to our children’s aspirations.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), On The Basis Of Sex

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RIP. 3 RBG Legacy Quotes:

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“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, CNN

“To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, CNN

On how she would like to be remembered: “Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has. To do something, as my colleague David Souter would say, outside myself. ‘Cause I’ve gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I’ve done for which I was not paid.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Town & Country Magazine

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