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'CONNORLiberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.
More Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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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 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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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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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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The power I exert on the court depends on the power of the power of my arguments, not my gender
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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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I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.
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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.
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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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[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 statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
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We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.
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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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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