Sandra Day O'Connor
Judge
1930-03-26
Quotes by Sandra Day O'Connor
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A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.
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Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
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A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.
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Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
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Yes, I will bring the understanding of a woman to the Court, but I doubt that alone will affect my decisions.
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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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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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And I went off to Stanford, I was pretty young and pretty naive. And I had a professor I really loved, who was himself a lawyer.
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I'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like.
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We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something.
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I had become increasingly concerned in recent years about the lack of civics education in our nation's schools. In recent years, the schools have stopped teaching it. And it's unfortunate.
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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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Commitment to the rule of law provides a basic assurance that people can know what to expect whether what they do is popular or unpopular at the time.
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The abortion cases produced an enormous amount of mail to my chambers, vastly more than to the other chambers, I am sure. I sometimes thought there wasn't a woman in the United States who didn't write me a letter on one side or the other of that issue.
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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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Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.
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As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself - and not just by voting.
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The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming.
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My concern was whether I could do the job of a justice well enough to convince the nation that my appointment was the right move.
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The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men's and women's earnings for the same work.
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