A moment of silence is not inherently religious.
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

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

Having family responsibilities and concerns just has to make you a more understanding person.
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 don't know that there are any short cuts to doing a good job.
Sandra Day O'Connor

I need to retire from retirement.
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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