Women In Law

"I had, in my legal practice, often encountered really shocking examples of the devastating impact of the costs of long-term medical care on meagre incomes. And, just before I was elected, I had my own personal experience in paying very considerable bills for my mother's terminal illness."

"One of the most helpful things I introduced (and of very considerable consequence to Canadians) was my ultimate success in persuading my colleagues (after continuing battle)to reduce the qualifying age for aged pensioners from seventy to sixty-five over a five year period."

"I suppose, as a politician, I should be content, for the Canada Pension Plan certainly put my name in Canada's history books, and in italics."

"I have always thought that one of the signs of natural leaders of men (and women) was their readiness to take the necessary pains to keep their followers with them."

"I took a hasty trip to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and England to talk to the officials of each Government about their pension provisions, and to talk to the responsible ministers in each country about the political "whys" of their legislation."

"Whenever Canada moves to protect its own industries and people, it is subjected to violent attacks in the U.S. Congress and to threats of economic retaliation."

"We were always expected to see Quebec's side of things, but there was damned little reciprocity."

"We had thought Mike the greatest; now we began to discover he was only human and, worse, we had our first dismaying confrontation with the fact that he would not back up his ministers."

"I had always assumed that if I made it to Parliament I would not remain a back bencher."

"Being a part of a political party is something like being a partner in a marriage - work at it and stay loyal to it, and when you can't stomach it any longer, leave it."

"Pity the Party without enough woman power - there will always be dreamers and leaders, but the dreams won't come true, nor will the leaders reach their goal, without the ready doers."

"Women understand that men must often be kept from soiling themselves with the dirty little details of life in order to accomplish the big shinny jobs unimpeded."

"One of the things that has always been my undoing in politics is my readiness to do whatever job has to be done."

"A government may only govern so long as the people, through their representatives, vote it the money to carry on."

"( I was the first, and to date, the only woman veteran ever elected, and there is a surprisingly low percentage of veterans in Parliament.)"

"I have served the Liberal cause for twenty-two years. That ought to be long enough for anyones lifetime."

"I did not spring, when I first entered Parliament, on November 15, 1960, "fully armed, with a mighty shout" from a breach in Lester B. Pearson's skull. like the Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus."

"What Hamas did was a massacre"

"The power of a government with so much money would be frightening. By controlling investment capital, it would be in a position to dominate business. We would then risk ending up with a sort of national socialism, as it was practiced in Nazi Germany."

"The sooner the Arab children will learn that they must build their houses where they are now, as the solution is not their return to Israel, the better it will be for everyone."

"Israeli Arabs must know they cannot live here and call the day of Israel's establishment the day of disaster."

"It has not been the style of Canadian politicians to write of their experiences, although it is the common practice for British, French, and American Politicians upon their retirement. But I have been criticized before and I expect to be again."

"My uncertain temper is cooling, as is my sense of racing against time to accomplish the things I want to. I don't have to go anywhere or see anyone I don't want to now, and it is a glorious feeling!"

"I cannot say that I have been hindered all my life by the permutation of genes that resulted in me being born a woman."

"Everyone is an expert on T.V., just as he is on education; everyone has some education and a T.V. set."

"Had it not been for Centennial, with its gaiety and its essential Canadianness, there could never have been a Trudeau as Prime Minister."

"JUSTICE GINSBURG:: If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, You don’t know how to use the English language, or how could you make that argument? It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive."

"Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has long been a thorn in the side of American conservatives. She's been pilloried in the right-wing press by a range of so-called political experts, including college drop-out and shock jock Lars Larson, who publicly declared that Justice Ginsburg is "anti-American." Her stinging dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which recently granted corporations certain exceptions to the Affordable Care Act with regard to birth control coverage, has once again loosed the gates of extreme conservative rhetoric. One columnist in The Washington Times even crowned her "liberal bully of the week" even though hers was the dissenting, not majority, opinion."

"I guess where I am on this, if you look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I mean, she — the Ginsburg rule, she doesn’t have to answer specific questions, clearly pro-choice going in, thinks there may even be a constitutional right to polygamy, has a controversial view we should lower the age of consent to 12, supports legalized prostitution, very left-wing."

"Well, there are all kind of hearts. There are bleeding hearts and there are hard hearts. And if I wanted to judge Justice Ginsburg on her heart, I might take a hard-hearted view of her and say she’s a bleeding heart. She represents the ACLU. She wants the age of consent to be 12. She believes there’s a constitutional right to prostitution. What kind of heart is that?"

"The ACLU and the librarians appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay in order to allow the librarians to testify before Congress, which was debating reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act at that very moment. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declined to intervene."

"I think performing Oscar the first time in Santa Fe is really what prompted me to look into proposing to my husband Scott, because it just seemed right. You know, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a huge advocate for Oscar and talked about in interviews. She came to the performances in Santa Fe and we were able to meet her and take photos with her. So it all just made sense: I think Prop 8 failed at that time, states started to make marriage legal, and it just all seemed right. So, yeah, we got married between the two runs of Oscar, and fortunately, Justice Ginsburg married us in D.C., which was such an honor. I still look back to that day and can’t really believe it! I asked her, and she said if I could come to Washington, D.C., she would be happy to do it."

"Ginsburg cautioned against the idea of thinking that the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which declared abortion was a constitutional right, was enough to guarantee women's reproductive freedom. Ginsburg was a lifelong staunch advocate for abortion rights and gender equality, but from her early days she had criticised the Supreme Court's handling of the abortion issue. She believed that the Roe v Wade case had based the right to abortion on the wrong argument, a violation of a woman's privacy rather than on gender equality. This, she thought, left the ruling vulnerable to targeted legal attacks by anti-abortion activists. Ginsburg felt that because the ruling had legalised abortion overnight nationwide, it had failed to resolve the issue. It had the effect of halting the political process that had been moving to liberalise abortion already – with advocates now believing that right was secure – and instead mobilised the anti-abortion movement."

"I first met Justice Ginsburg a year ago, when she invited me to her chambers and to a tea for international fellows from Georgetown law school, at which she was speaking. It struck me then, as we walked through the courthouse, that each marker she pointed out involved women’s history — from a photograph and a political cartoon in the hallway outside her chambers of Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court bar, to the renaming of a dining room at the court in honor of Natalie Cornell Rehnquist, wife of the late chief justice. (The tribute was O’Connor’s idea. “My former chief was a traditionalist, but he could hardly object,” Ginsburg said with a bit of glee.)"

"The passing on and transformation of heritage and tradition-and the creation of ever new possibilities for women-are also exemplified in the life story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. When President Clinton announced the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993, pending Senate approval, Ginsburg accepted the nomination by expressing gratitude to "the bravest and strongest person I have known," her mother, Celia Amster Bader, adding that she prayed that she might "be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons"...Ginsburg is one of a number of Jewish women who helped to change the rules of professional life and parenthood, making it more possible for mothers, as well as fathers, to become mentors to their offspring, and for daughters, as well as sons, to be fully cherished. A secular but identified Jew and feminist, she offers young Jewish women a powerful example of a committed, achieving, courageous modern professional woman connected to her ethnic roots as well as to the broad interests of American women as a class. When Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court, she learned from a former classmate that her law school nickname had been "Bitch." Ginsburg's response was typical of the line of assertive Jewish women from which she had sprung: "Better bitch than mouse," she replied."

"Pedophilia is good for the children"

"To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you, that’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for oneself but for one’s community."

"We are at last beginning to relegate to the history books the idea of the token woman."

"This is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It’s a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she’s being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices."

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

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

"It helps sometimes to be a little deaf (in marriage and in) every workplace, including the good job I have now."

"She said, 'Dear, in every good marriage it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.' And I followed that advice in dealing not only with my dear spouse but in dealing even with my colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court.""

"We are a nation made strong by people like you."

"They have never been a 13-year-old girl."

"When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?’ and my answer is: ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that."

"Think back to 1787. Who were 'we the people'? … They certainly weren't women … they surely weren't people held in human bondage. The genius of our Constitution is that over now more than 200 sometimes turbulent years that 'we' has expanded and expanded."

"At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know."

"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

"The young people are my hope. Think of Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg. I think the young people I see are fired up and they want our country to be what it should be."