Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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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.
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Half the states have stopped making civics and government a requirement for high school. Half.
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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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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.
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There was no hostility at the court when I arrived.
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What the framers of the Constitution tried to achieve when they wrote that Constitution back in the 1700s was an independent federal judiciary. They wanted federal judges to be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and to serve for good behavior.
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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.
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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.
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I think it's inevitable that some of the court's decisions will be found by a segment of the public to be not the right decision or subject to criticism.
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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.
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How dare you make my life a felony.
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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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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.
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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.
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Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, 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.
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It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.
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We don't accomplish anything in this world alone.
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Historically courts in this country have been insulated. We do not look beyond our borders for precedents.
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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.
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We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.
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I think people know very little, really, about the court, how it works and its history. And both of those things are important in our country, but they're not things that most citizens know much about.
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It's hard to have little children and a job and career at the same time. There is no time left for you as a woman.
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My concerns through the years increased about the concerns of an independent judiciary and how we maintain it. Certainly in the states. I'm a product of state government in my own state of Arizona. And it seemed to me that the popular election of judges was creating major problems in many states, and we had improved the system in Arizona. And I thought the nation ought to at least rethink how we select our nation's trial judges in the states.
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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. Thats set out in the Constitution.