Ketanji Brown Jackson Quotes

We must not choose harsh words that tear people down. We must choose kind words that lift people up.

Success is never ours alone. As my aunt knew, in all the brightest and best of human endeavors, it takes a village.

My parents had taught me, albeit unwittingly, that one didn't have to rise and respond to every perceived slight or unfair circumstance.

challenges arose, a capacity for personal resilience. My hope is that the trials and triumphs of my journey as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, litigator, and friend will stand as a testament for young women, people of color, and strivers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and believe with stubborn faith in the possibility of achieving them. I want to encourage these bold dreamers not to be turned aside by adversity, because life will always present challenges. We must allow them to teach and fortify us, and help us build confidence in our ability to find a way through. In the end, we must trust the path we choose to walk, anchored by a firm sense of our potential, inspired by the people with whom we surround ourselves, and bolstered by our willingness to keep on.

You might think you are all that, winning all sorts of prizes, learning all sorts of things, and that that entitles you to make fun of people. But don't you ever laugh at someone who doesn't know how to spell or read as well as you do! Just because you have been blessed with parents who are teachers, who are able to make sure you get an education, doesn't make you one bit better than someone who didn't have the same opportunities.

I am reminded that no matter how charmed or arrow-straight my life might appear from the outside, delivering me to the loftiest pinnacle of my chosen career, behind the spotlight's bright glare are the private moments marked by individual sacrifice, resilient striving, and abiding love. These, I would argue, are the truest measures of success on the path we humans travel.

In the end, we must trust the path we choose to walk, anchored by a firm sense of our potential, inspired by the people with whom we surround ourselves, and bolstered by our willingness to keep on. As I often tell the young people I talk to, including my own college-age daughters, ordinary humans can do extraordinary things. So go ahead, and dream as enormously and as courageously as you can. If you are diligent and well-prepared, relentlessly optimistic, and resolute in purpose, you will be capable of creating a brilliant future for yourself. And, as my own life has shown, no matter where we began our journey, or the missteps we will surely make along the way, we must press forward, girded by our blessings and strengthened by our hardships, whether we are laboring quietly outside the spotlight, or in full view on a public stage, we are, each of us, called to write our story in the chronicle of history, too.

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It’s unfair that we can’t just be regular students here like everyone else,” I argued. “We’re the ones having sleepless nights while trying to get the administration to support us. But that is exactly what the Confederate flag bearer wants—for us to be so distracted that we fail our classes and reinforce the stereotype that we can’t cut it in a place like Harvard.” I then referenced a quote from Toni Morrison, who three years earlier had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved, her devastatingly lyrical novel about a formerly enslaved woman choosing freedom on her own terms. More than a decade before that, in a 1975 lecture about the American Dream that Morrison gave at Portland State University, the author had cautioned that Black people needed to take care not to get turned aside by racism. “The function, the very serious function of racism…is distraction,” she had told her audience. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” Thankfully, my friends heard what Toni Morrison sought to convey. From that day forward, we became more purposeful in how we showed up for rallies and protests, advocating for the causes we supported in between attending classes and study sessions, and refusing to allow our necessary activism to undermine our academic success. As Antoinette put it, “Our backs got straight, we faced forward, our stride was sure, because once we recognized the true toll of that Confederate flag, not just on our psyche but also our work, we were determined to get the last laugh.

The lone dissenter in Plessy was Justice John Marshall Harlan, on whose family Bible I swore my oath of office before taking my own seat on the high court.

with the incarcerated being pressed into lawful indentured servitude as a partial fix for the free-labor void that the abolition of slavery had caused.

the sky overhead blue with promise as she prayed, “God, if I ever have my own children, if you bless me with my own family, I am going to love them so much.

Look at your mother,” he would say to the children. “Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you ever saw?” “Yes, Daddy, we know, we know,” the kids would reply, rolling their eyes while basking in their parents’ gentle affection for each other

she and my grandfather applied themselves to bringing up their brood with harmony, discipline, and mutual joy.

never to throw my blessings back in God’s face.