Top 70 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Featured in: Positive Inspirational Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Powerful Motivational Quotes, Motivational Quotes for Women, Wednesday Motivational Quotes

2. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Learning Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Important Quotes, Reading Quotes

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Be Yourself Quotes, Positive Quotes for Women

5. “Women’s rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

6. “Promoting active liberty does not mean allowing the majority to run roughshod over minorities. It calls for taking special care that all groups have a chance to fully participate in society and the political process.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

7. “I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

8. “So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

9. “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.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

10. “Dissents speak to a future age.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

11. “Generalizations about the “way women are” and estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

12. “The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

13. “Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

14. “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

15. “The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

16. “So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

17. “Be independent and be a lady.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

18. “I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew. The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

20. “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

21. “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.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

22. “Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

23. “It is not women’s liberation, it is women’s and men’s liberation.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

24. “I became a lawyer for selfish reasons. I thought I could do a lawyer’s job better than any other.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

25. “If we gave up our freedom as the price of security, we would no longer be the great nation that we are.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

26. “A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

27. “When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

28. “A prime part of the history of our Constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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29. “It is not like I have gone crazy, I just don’t want to take any chances. You never know what could happen.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

30. “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

31. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

32. “Speak you mind even if your voice shakes.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

33. “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

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

35. “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

36. “I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

37. “If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

38. “There is a Constitutional right to prostitution.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

40. “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

42. “Prisons should be co-ed because separate quarters are discriminatory.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

43. “One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the impositions of the laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

44. “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

45. “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

46. “The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

47. “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

48. “I don’t say women’s rights – I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

49. “Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: “Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

50. “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