Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes

The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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'Connor

I think the important thing about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Occasionally we have to interpret an international treaty - one, perhaps, affecting airlines and liability for injury to passengers or damage to goods. Then, of course, we have to look to the precedents of other member nations in resolving issues.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

When I went to law school, which after all was back in the dark ages, we never looked beyond our borders for precedents. As a state court judge, it never would have occurred to me to do so, and when I got to the Supreme Court, it was very much the same. We just didn't do it.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I think we may be seeing the beginnings of a resurgence of civic-mindedness in this country. Hopefully the younger generations, which came out in record numbers during the last presidential election, will pass their enthusiasm on to their children.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I care very much about women and their progress. I didn't go march in the streets, but when I was in the Arizona Legislature, one of the things that I did was to examine every single statute in the state of Arizona to pick out the ones that discriminated against women and get them changed.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I wanted to be a cattle rancher when I was young, because it was what I knew and I loved it.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Well, it's a little odd, the path I took, because when I was young, I wanted to be a cattle rancher. That was what I knew and that was what I liked.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I don't know how a judge can concentrate on being fair and impartial when he or she is faced with possible jail time for making a decision that others deem incorrect.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member - male or female. They were all kind and welcoming.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Parents should continue to become more involved with their communities, and more involved in their children's education.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

It was better for me when I was joined at the court by a second woman. When I was there alone, there was too much media focus on the one woman, and the minute we got another woman, that changed.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The framers of the Constitution were so clear in the federalist papers and elsewhere that they felt an independent judiciary was critical to the success of the nation.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperative and her place in society.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

For students, understanding the separate and unique functions of each branch of government can help them understand how different kinds of government officials can help solve different kinds of problems.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

If you take a position under the Constitution that is against the majority view, you have to explain it well enough that maybe you can persuade some of that majority to agree with you.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

My hope is that 10 years from now, after I've been across the street at work for a while, they'll all be glad they gave me that wonderful vote.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I need to retire from retirement.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

In terms of having the American people look at the court and think of it as being fair and appropriate for our nation, it helps to have women, plural, on the court.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Yes, I will bring the understanding of a woman to the Court, but I doubt that alone will affect my decisions.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

If parents instill a sense of civic-mindedness - and there is no better way to do that than by example - their children will probably follow.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Justice Ginsburg is a very competent justice, and it is a joy to have her on the court, but particularly for me it is a pleasure to have a second woman on the court.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Historically courts in this country have been insulated. We do not look beyond our borders for precedents.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I loved my husband very much, and it was heartbreaking to have him develop Alzheimer's disease, and to stand by and watch him decline in his ability to take care of himself.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

You have citizens who don't understand how government works and they're kind of soured on it. All they do is criticize. They have no idea that they can make things happen.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Half the states have stopped making civics and government a requirement for high school. Half.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

A state of war is not a blank check... when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

I don't know that there are any short cuts to doing a good job.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The fact is, we are a nine-member court that sits on cases.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself - and not just by voting.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

A moment of silence is not inherently religious.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men's and women's earnings for the same work.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.

- Sandra Day O'Connor

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.

- Sandra Day O'Connor