Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.
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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[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.
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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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I think most people didn’t want to do court duty.
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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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Each justice hires their own clerks, and applications are made individually to the justices. It isn’t a group decision.
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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.
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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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How dare you make my life a felony.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.
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