I finally gave up my little law practice and stayed home for about three years. You have to do what you can to keep the family going. But I wanted to get back to work. So I got another babysitter and went to work as an Assistant Attorney General.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNORI think I learned to appreciate and treasure each day, because you don’t know how many you’re going to be given.
More Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
-
-
It is true that as you have children, there are a good many months when you don’t want to be working full-time. I agree that that’s an issue.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
If I stumbled badly in doing the job, I think it would have made life more difficult for women, and that was a great concern of mine and still is.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
I think it’s inevitable that some of the court’s decisions will be found by a segment of the public to be not the right decision or subject to criticism.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
My sense is that jurists from other nations around the world understand that our court occupies a very special place in the American system, and that the court is rather well regarded in comparison, perhaps, to their own.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
And I went off to Stanford, I was pretty young and pretty naive. And I had a professor I really loved, who was himself a lawyer.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
The power I exert on the court depends on the power of the power of my arguments, not my gender
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
It is a measure of the framers’ fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
If parents instill a sense of civic-mindedness – and there is no better way to do that than by example – their children will probably follow.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
How dare you make my life a felony.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Historically courts in this country have been insulated. We do not look beyond our borders for precedents.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
It was better for me when I was joined at the court by a second woman. When I was there alone, there was too much media focus on the one woman, and the minute we got another woman, that changed.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination …is an unfortunate reality…and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
I’m not on the court anymore, so no use looking for my philosophy. If somebody’s waiting for that, they can wait for another justice.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Society as a whole benefits immeasurably from a climate in which all persons, regardless of race or gender, may have the opportunity to earn respect, responsibility, advancement and remuneration based on ability.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Unfortunately civility is hard to codify or legislate, but you know it when you see it. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
[G]overnment endorsement . . . of religion . . . sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
I loved my husband very much, and it was heartbreaking to have him develop Alzheimer’s disease, and to stand by and watch him decline in his ability to take care of himself.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
I don’t think it’s the court’s perceived role to do some explaining of a political nature.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR -
It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. Thats set out in the Constitution.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR