Welcome to our collection of Sandra Day Oconnor Quotes. As the first female US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor’s words and actions have influenced legal discourse and social discourse for generations. We’ve curated some of her most inspiring quotes on a wide range of topics, from women’s rights to the importance of education. No matter what your background or beliefs, we hope these quotes will inspire and empower you.
Best Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes
⚫ “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
⚫ “Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “I don’t know that there are any short cuts to doing a good job.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “I think I learned to appreciate and treasure each day, because you don’t know how many you’re going to be given.” –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
⚫ “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “This chance will stand before you only once.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes on Law and Justice
⚫ “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 finally gave up my little law practice and stayed home for about three years. You have to do what you can to keep the family going. But I wanted to get back to work. So I got another babysitter and went to work as an Assistant Attorney General.” –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
⚫ “In my work a good library is essential. It enables me to learn the background and previous discussions of the various issues I am called upon to decide. It provides the stability and continuity for the rule of law.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.” –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 prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “The proper role of the judiciary is one of interpreting and applying the law, not making it.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
“Unfortunately civility is hard to codify or legislate, but you know it when you see it. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.” –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
⚫ “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
Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes with Life Lessons
⚫ “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
⚫ “Be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination, if you always strive for excellence, you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.” –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
⚫ “Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.” –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
⚫ “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
⚫ “The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.” –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
⚫ “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
⚫ “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
Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes Reflecting on Her Life
⚫ “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
⚫ “How dare you make my life a felony.” –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
⚫ “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
⚫ “I need to retire from retirement.” –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
⚫ “The power I exert on the court depends on the power of the power of my arguments, not my gender.” –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
More Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes on Government
⚫ “Cyberspace undeniably reflects some form of geography.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “Half the states have stopped making civics and government a requirement for high school. Half.” –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
⚫ “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
⚫ “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
⚫ “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
⚫ “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
⚫ “So how as a nation can we sit around and eat Mexican food, and drink beer and make friends? That’s the question. If we can do that on a broader scale, I think we’ll come out of it all right.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “Society as a whole benefit 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
⚫ “The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “We hold that the reckless disregard for human life implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activity known to carry a grave risk of death represents a highly culpable mental state that may be taken into account in making a capital sentencing judgment not inevitable, lethal result.” –Sandra Day O’Connor
Sandra Day O’Connor Quotes About Justice
⚫ “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
⚫ “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
⚫ “I don’t think it’s the court’s perceived role to do some explaining of a political nature.” ― Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “I like to think that the court will continue to be held in high regard by the public. I think it should be.” ― Sandra Day O’Connor
⚫ “I think most people didn’t want to do court duty.” ― 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
⚫ “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
⚫ “Suppose you had a cross burning in a play or a movie… Would that be intimidating?” ~ 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
⚫ “There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.” ― Sandra Day O’Connor
Famous Sandra Day O’ Connor Quotes
⚫ “As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself — and not just by voting.”
⚫ “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.”
⚫ “Each justice hires their own clerks, and applications are made individually to the justices. It isn’t a group decision.”
⚫ “Even in my own time and in my own life, I have witnessed a revolution.
⚫ “I don’t know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job.”
⚫ “I need to retire from retirement.”
⚫ “It’s hard to have little children and a career at the same time. There is no time left for you as a woman.”
⚫ “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.”
⚫ “Society as a whole benefit 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.”
⚫ “The courts of this country should not be the places where the resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.”
⚫ “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.”
⚫ “The members of the court were just delighted to have a ninth member – male or female. They were all kind and welcoming.”
⚫ “We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone.”
⚫ “We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.”
Quotes By First American Female Associate Justice
⚫ “A moment of silence is not inherently religious.”
⚫ “Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.”
⚫ “Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.”
⚫ “How dare you make my life a felony.”
⚫ “I think most people didn’t want to do court duty.”
⚫ “I worked for no salary and I put my desk in with the secretary
⚫ “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.”
⚫ “The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men’s and women’s earnings for the same work.
⚫ “There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.”
⚫ “Yes, I will bring the understanding of a woman to the Court, but I doubt that alone will affect my decisions.”
⚫ “You’re there to make legal decisions based on the law and the Constitution of the United States.”
⚫ “Young people can’t name a single Justice on the United States Supreme Court but they can name all three judges on American Idol. It’s pretty sad.”
Quotes By Author O’Connor
⚫ “I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.”
⚫ “It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.”
⚫ “It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.”
⚫ “It’s wonderful to be the first to do something but I didn’t want to be the last.”
⚫ “The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.”
⚫ “This chance will stand before you only once.”
⚫ “Unfortunately civility is hard to codify or legislate, but you know it when you see it. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable.”
⚫ “We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.”
⚫ “You have a job to do and it doesn’t mean succumbing to somebody’s emotional pitch made out on the sidewalk.”
Verdict
Sandra Day Oconnor Quotes are a testament to her intelligence, insight, and wit. She touched on many different topics from women’s rights to the importance of education. Her quotes are a reminder of the power of knowledge and the importance of striving for justice and equality for all. We can learn much from Sandra Day O’Connor’s words and use them to create a better world.