Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Quotes About Empowerment and Equality Form an Enduring Legacy
“Women’s rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday at the age of 87, due to complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. A staunch advocate for women's rights, Ginsburg became known for her progressive votes on a plethora of important issues, including same-sex marriage, abortion, affirmative action, and healthcare.
Here, we round up some of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's most unforgettable quotes, in tribute to the feminist icon and her important legacy.
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ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS
“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.”—Via the ACLU.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception.”—A 2009 interview with USA Today, via CNN.
“People ask me sometimes, when—when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the [Supreme] Court? And my answer is when there are nine.”—Speaking at Georgetown University, via PBS.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg is honored at the Fourth Annual Berggruen Prize Gala in 2019. (Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images)
ON BECOMING KNOWN AS THE NOTORIOUS RBG
“It was beyond my wildest imagination that I would one day become the Notorious RBG. I am now 86 years old and yet people of all ages want to take their picture with me.”—Via Reuters.
ON ABORTION
“My idea of how choice should have developed was not a privacy notion, not a doctor’s right notion, but a woman’s right to control her own destiny, to be able to make choices without a Big Brother state telling her what she can and cannot do.”—From an interview with Literary Hub.
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ON EDUCATION
“My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the ‘40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S.”—Via the ACLU.
ON "HAVING IT ALL"
“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.”—From an interview with Katie Couric at Yahoo! News.
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In her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on August 7, 2002. (Photo: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)
ON LIVING WITH CANCER
“Justice O'Connor had set the model. She had breast surgery and she was on the bench nine days after her surgery. She said, ‘Now, Ruth, have your chemotherapy on a Friday. That way, you have the weekend to get over it.’”—From a 2016 interview with CBS This Morning.
“There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead. And I am very much alive.”—Via NPR.
ON EQUALITY
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”—As quoted in the documentary, RBG, via Reuters.
ON PERSEVERANCE
“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”—As quoted in Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, via Think Progress.
This article originally appeared on Harper's BAZAAR US.