Rose Bird Quotes

#1. The courts are an easy scapegoat because at a time when everything has to boiled down to easy slogans, we speak in subtleties.

Rose Bird

#2. We are incarcerating more people on a per capita basis in California than any country in the world other than South Africa or the Soviet Union.

Rose Bird

#3. Art strives for form, and hopes for beauty.

Rose Bird

#4. The role of the press and the protections which we afford it are today more important than ever before, because we dwell in a society where belief in our governments and in the strength of our institutions is declining.

Rose Bird

#5. My role isn't to be politically smart. My role is to do what's right under the constitution. And if that's politically unpopular, so be it.

Rose Bird

#6. Courts are an aristocratic institution in a democracy. That's the dilemma for an institution that has the function of reviewing the will of the people. We're bound to be "anti-majoritarian."

Rose Bird

#7. It is easy to be popular. It is not easy to be just.

Rose Bird

#8. If our courts lose their authority and their rulings are no longer respected, there will be no one left to resolve the divisive issues that can rip the social fabric apart ... The courts are a safety valve without which no democratic society can survive.

Rose Bird

#9. The judiciary must not take on the coloration of whatever may be popular at the moment. We are guardian of rights, and we have to tell people things they often do not like to hear.

Rose Bird

#10. It's always the minorities who aren't a part of the mainstream who define what the limits ... of the majority are going to be.

Rose Bird

#11. We have probed the earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it ... That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-month basis, we would have been evicted long ago.

Rose Bird