I think I learned to appreciate and treasure each day, because you don’t know how many you’re going to be given.
SANDRA DAY O'CONNORUnfortunately civility is hard to codify or legislate, but you know it when you see it. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.
More Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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I think most people didn’t want to do court duty.
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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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What was a problem was the excessive amount of media attention to the appointment of the first woman and everything she did. Everywhere that Sandra went, the press was sure to go. And that got tiresome; it was stressful.
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Historically courts in this country have been insulated. We do not look beyond our borders for precedents.
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If a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.
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I’m a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it’s terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don’t like.
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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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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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(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 like to think that the court will continue to be held in high regard by the public. I think it should be.
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