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'CONNORDespite 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.
More Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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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.
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I don’t think it’s the court’s perceived role to do some explaining of a political nature.
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We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.
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I have always thought that while it’s wonderful to be the first to do something, you don’t want to be the last.
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Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.
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(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.
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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.
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Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.
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I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they’re not things that most citizens know much about.
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If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.
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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.
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The power I exert on the court depends on the power of the power of my arguments, not my gender
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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.
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I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.
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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.
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Each justice hires their own clerks, and applications are made individually to the justices. It isn’t a group decision.
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We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.
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Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.
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Unfortunately civility is hard to codify or legislate, but you know it when you see it. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think I learned to appreciate and treasure each day, because you don’t know how many you’re going to be given.
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The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I’m not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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