Ruth Bader Ginsberg Quotes

“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 most painful thing in life is to watch the people you love wither away.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert

“If only the court had acted more slowly,’ RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had ‘halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue. (85).”
― Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“In my long life, I have seen many changes. Changes for the better. The most important is that we are not using the talent of all the people, not just half of them.”
― Jeffrey Rosen, Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law

“Sean's a creep! You're better than this!"
She stands, glaring at me. "I am better than this. I'm better than Sean, and I'm better than the Watchers, and you have no idea what I'm doing, so keep your judgy eyebrows to yourself."
"My eyebrows are not judgy!"
"Your eyebrows are so judgy they might as well have a gavel!"
We both glare at each other. I crack first. "Can they have a frilly white collar like Ruth Bader Ginsburg?"
She tries to hold her stern look, but the edges are trembling. "No. Your eyebrows have to wear a huge gross wig because we're not in the USA, we're in Ireland."
I snort, which turns into a giggle. Artemis was never one for giggling, but even she grins at me, and for a few precious moments we're each other's again.”
― Kiersten White, Chosen