Sandra Day O'Connor Quotes
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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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I suspect that over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues. Doing so may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all important good impression.
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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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Parents should continue to become more involved with their communities, and more involved in their children's education.
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The purpose prong of the Lemon test requires that a government activity have a secular purpose. That requirement is not satisfied, however, by the mere existence of some secular purpose, however dominated by religious purposes... The proper inquiry under the purpose prong of Lemon, I submit, is whether the government intends to convey a message of endorsement or disapproval of religion.
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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.
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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.
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The fact is that knowledge about the Constitution and the Court is not something that is handed down through the gene pool; every generation has to learn it. And I'm not sure the recent generations have done that good a job of learning about it.
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Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.
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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.
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The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.
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I think most people didn't want to do court duty.
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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.
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The whole idea of a public education was to train young people about how our system of government works, so they could be good citizens and be part of it. We're not doing that today.
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A moment of silence is not inherently religious.
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Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values.
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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.
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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.
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I have always thought that while it's wonderful to be the first to do something, you don't want to be the last.