Best Ruth Bader Ginsburg, RBG, Quotes with Graphics

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Notorious RBG, was small in stature but a giant in fighting for gender rights, civil rights, and a better world. 

She was the second woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court where she worked tirelessly for decades through many bouts of cancer and the loss of her beloved husband.

To commemorate of her passing in September 2020, I offer this post of my favorite quotes from Justice RBG. 

What's in This Post

I'd love to hear what your favorite Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg words of wisdom are. Let us know by leaving a comment at the end of the post. 

About the Collars RBG Wore with Her Supreme Court Robe

Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore lace collars or statement necklaces over her Supreme Court robe. Here's what she said to the Washington Post about that choice in 2009:

“You know, the standard robe is made for a man because it has a place for the shirt to show, and the tie. So I and Sandra Day O’Connor, [the first female Supreme Court Justice] thought it would be appropriate if we included as part of our robe something typical of a woman.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes On Being a Lady

1. “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

2. "My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

How Notorious RBG Wants to Be Remembered

3. "I would like to be remembered as 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.” 

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 4. "I spent no time fretting, and found a way to do what I thought important to get done.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in My Own Words

Justice Ginsburg Change Quote

5. "Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

RBG Quotes About How to Be

6. “Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don’t burn your bridges. Don’t be afraid to take charge, think about what you want, then do the work, but then enjoy what makes you happy, bring along your crew, have a sense of humor.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

7. "If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in My Own Words

8. "I really concentrate on what's on my plate at the moment and do the very best I can."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

9. “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

Justice RBG Quotes About Listening and Tact

10. "I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I created 2 graphics for this quote. One containing the phrase that is most often quoted and one containing the entire quote.

 [NOTE: The sketch of RBG is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.]

 12. “You can disagree without being disagreeable.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

13. "Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Quotes on Dealing with Challenges

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

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

15. “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, in My Own Words

16. "I’m dejected, but only momentarily, when I can’t get the fifth vote for something I think is very important. But then you go on to the next challenge and you give it your all. You know that these important issues are not going to go away. They are going to come back again and again. There’ll be another time, another day."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

17. "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."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Her Husband and Marriage

18. "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

19. "Marty 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

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

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Notorious RBG Quotes On Equality of Men and Women

21. "It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

23. "A gender line...helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

25. "Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

26. "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

27. “I remember envying the boys long before I even knew the word feminism, because I liked shop better than cooking or sewing.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Quotes On Discrimination of all Forms

28. "I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

29. “I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at. My favorite example is the symphony orchestra. When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

30. "I ... try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

31. “We should not be held back from pursuing our full talents, from contributing what we could contribute to the society, because we fit into a certain mould ― because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg 

LGBTQ Marriage Rights Justice Ginsburg Quote

32. “All of the incentives, all of the benefits of marriage affords would still be available. So you’re not taking away anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with marriage that they do now.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

RBG Quotes On Abortion, A Woman’s Right to Choose, and Reproductive Rights

33. “Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny.”

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg


34. “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


35. "The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control."

― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Books by and about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Click on the book title to go to its Amazon page. 

• My Own Words , by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

• Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law  

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

• In Defense of Justice: The Greatest Dissents of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Edited and Annotated for the Non-Lawyer

• Children's book: My Little Golden Book About Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I may receive a small commission for sales of books from this page, but it doesn't effect your price or my decision to include the item. Links appear for your convenience. 

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