Sandra Day O'Connor

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.

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.

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.

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

I need to retire from retirement.

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

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

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

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

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.

There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.