Uh' is not an answer.

I really believe if you give people a product that couples entertainment with a little bit of education, a soft glove and sense of humor - especially about a subject people have begun to feel very frustrated about, which is the legal system - then you have a formula for success.

When states and cities and our country say we're going to tax the rich - and that word 'rich' or 'wealthy' doesn't sound like it comes from success of hard work, but from something negative - I resent it.

I'm realistic. I'm not becoming Farrah Fawcett here. If you stay beyond your welcome, it's for ego or money or because you can't exist without the limelight. I'm fine without it.

I don't know where, or by whom, Judge Wapner was raised, but my parents taught me, when you don't have something nice to say about someone, say nothing.

All the judges watched Judge Wapner. All America, at one point or another, watched Judge Wapner.

I try to have the right thing happen at the end of the case, try to have the case have a moral compass to it, try to do a little teaching while I'm at it because that's the, you know, that's the preacher in me.

I deal with conflicts that irritate people and give them stress, like the dispute over a car payment. I can resolve those cases in a moment.

I eat liars for breakfast.

Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior.

While I sat in family court, I probably heard 20 or 25,000 cases. And I am sure, during the course of those cases, there were cases that I probably would've decided differently had I had either more time or been able to explore more. But all you can do as a judge is really give a case your best effort.

I think that there is a difference between men and women as a warrior and a nurturer... It's innate.

I was a sitting judge in Manhattan. I was a supervising judge in Manhattan, and they said to me, 'Did you ever think of doing what you do on television?'

I don't read bad mail. I don't save mail. I'm too old to read negative things.

The reason that you have statutes of limitations is because evidence goes stale sometimes.

This country has a wonderful spirit.

I still love working. I still love being in the mix of things.

I set realistic goals consistent with my talents. I never, for instance, wanted to sit on an appellate court. I'm not an academic. Truth be told, I hate to do research. I have a practical mind, and I was well suited for the trial court bench, not the appellate.

I was a grown-up when 'celebrity' happened. So I knew exactly what it was like to be in line at a restaurant and watch someone famous walk in and get a table immediately. I knew I didn't like that; I don't want to make somebody else feel the way I felt.

I never don't have a good time. Even when I go to work with a cold or a sore throat, as soon as I hit the mark and walk out that door, everything else is gone, and I'm up.

I exercise, and I eat reasonably, and I don't want to look at myself being out of shape. That would depress me.

Because of the world we live in, we lock the doors in our house when we go to sleep. If you live in an apartment, if you can, you get a building that has a doorman or security.

So we want to free the women of America? You know what would free the women of America? Make men accept responsibility for birth control.

Remember, a Trojan is more than a horse.

I was an unremarkable student with passable looks and a direct personality.

Nothing in my early childhood suggested to anyone - except maybe my father - that one day I would be standing here and be known simply as Judge Judy.

People in the U.S. pay a great deal of money to support their judiciary, and they have an actual right to see how it functions.

Cameras should be the norm everywhere. It should be in every courtroom so that the proceedings are taken down and recorded just like stenography.

It's nice to leave on top.

Women watch and say, 'I like watching you control your own space. It's motivated me to do better, to go back to college, to even try law school. My daughter's been watching you since she's 10 - I love the fact that she's watching a strong woman who's in control.' All of those things are good, positive things.

Who is interested in that? Who is interested in the warm and fuzzy? There's enough warm and fuzzy on television.

Women make a terrible mistake because they usually are so desperate to nest that they pick on schlubs and worthless pieces of trash that they pick up in a bar.

Teach your daughters, teach your granddaughters, everybody has to have something that they're good at where they can earn a living.

What keeps me going is those cases, maybe ten a year, where I can make a difference.

They will find somebody younger, somebody funnier, somebody more engaged. As long as the court genre is viable, people are going to be looking for someone to knock me off of my perch.

I've had an absolutely magical run.

If you can share with the people who've been good to you, do it.

You should want to give something back.

People from Brooklyn grow up with a certain common sense. If it doesn't ring true, it's not true.

I don't like to rule by committee. I like sort of an autocratic way of dealing with things.

I was in the family court for 25 years. And having started a second career, having a second act when you were 52 was something that I never thought would happen to me.

I never had an issue with gender.

In too many ways, political correctness has been a bully.

My first husband is a lovely, lovely man, but he always viewed my job as a hobby, and there came a time where I resented that.

I don't feel as if anything that has happened to me in my life was sidetracked because I was a woman.

Being a TV star is a great gift. Everyone treats you royally.

I started out in a two-room apartment in Brooklyn and thought, 'Never again.'

All those good people huddling behind bars in gated communities - it's the wrong way round. The others should have the bars.

It took them 13 years to get O. J. Simpson, but they got him. What goes around comes around.

I think I'm a good fact finder.