My mother-in-law’s advice, which she gave me on the day of our wedding — we were married in Marty’s home, and his mother took me into the bedroom, her bedroom and said, “Dear, I’d like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage.” “Yes. What is the secret?” “It helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” And I found that advice — it stood me in very good stead not only in a wonderful marriage that lasted well over half a century, but in every workplace I’ve served, dealing with my faculty colleagues when I was a law teacher, and even now with my colleagues on the Supreme Court. When an unkind word is said, a thoughtless word, best to tune out.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1993–2020; Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 1980–1993
United States · 1933–2020
Politics and public life
About
Served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. Previously a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, director of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, and a law professor at Rutgers and Columbia.
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Having advanced well beyond what the French call "a certain age," I am often asked to convey to younger people helpful advice and counsel. So I will open these remarks with the best advice I ever received. The advice, which I have several times shared with others, was given to me by my mother-in-law on my wedding day. She had a prescription for a happy, enduring marriage: "It pays," she said, "it pays sometimes to be a little deaf."
Recorded
New York Law School Law Review dinner, on accepting the Froessel Award, New York Law School Law Review (digitalcommons.nyls.edu), 12 February 1999
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