Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

If you just needed the skills to pass the bar, two years would be enough. But if you think of law as a learned profession, then a third year is an opportunity for, on the one hand, public service and practice experience, but on the other, also to take courses that round out the law that you didn't have time to do.

The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.

My biographers... would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided... to flip the order.

It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,' but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn't the right one.

The women of my generation and my daughter's generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don't consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.

'Whole Women's Health' made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I think we understand that for the Court to work well, we have to not only respect but genuinely like each other.

Not a law firm in the entire city of New York bid for my employment as a lawyer when I earned my degree.

The Democrats do fine in presidential elections; their problem is they can't get out the vote in the midterm elections.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn't have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

Ever since my colorectal cancer in 1999, I have been followed by the N.I.H. That was very lucky for me because they detected my pancreatic cancer at a very early stage.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

You can't have it all, all at once. Who - man or woman - has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

A gender line... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, 'We, the people.'

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

There's nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.

If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.

I can't imagine what this place would be - I can't imagine what the country would be - with Donald Trump as our president.

It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.

It's a facet of the gay rights movement that people don't think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn't until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana's 'head and master rule,' that the husband was head and master of the house.

The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.

Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always - well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus' famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn't - to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia's favorite expressions - 'Get over it!'

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

Dissents speak to a future age.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

You can't have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.