Ginsburg said this at the Radcliffe Day luncheon at Harvard on 29 May 2015, answering a question about the advice she would give young women today. The wording is confirmed verbatim by the host institution and contemporaneous news coverage — a rare case of a “famous name” quote that is genuinely theirs.
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Radcliffe Day luncheon, Harvard University, 29 May 2015
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Evoking the world of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — U.S. Supreme Court Justice & pioneering women's-rights litigator. Theme: "Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The source
Speaker
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Occasion
Radcliffe Day luncheon (Radcliffe Medal presentation)
Venue & date
Harvard University, 29 May 2015
Prompt
Asked what advice she would give young women today
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Ginsburg’s reply when asked what advice she would give young women; she paired it with reflections on the 1970s women’s-rights cases she argued and the stereotypes they were meant to dismantle.
This is a spoken remark first delivered in 2015; as a recent, identifiable statement by a named speaker it is treated as in-copyright, with rights resting with Ginsburg’s estate. It is well short of the pre-1931 threshold for the U.S. public domain.
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Filed under
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1933–2020 · U.S. Supreme Court Justice & pioneering women’s-rights litigator
Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued a landmark series of sex-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court in the 1970s as head of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, then served as an Associate Justice of that same Court from 1993 until her death in 2020. Known for her precise, incremental advocacy and pointed dissents, she became a cultural icon in her final decade. This quote — her advice to young women — distills her method: press hard for your cause, but in a way that wins allies rather than repels them.
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Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, remarks at the Radcliffe Day luncheon (Radcliffe Medal presentation), Harvard University, 29 May 2015, as reported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Huffington Post (30 May 2015).
MLA (9th ed.)
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. “Remarks at the Radcliffe Day Luncheon.” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 29 May 2015.
APA (7th ed.)
Ginsburg, R. B. (2015, May 29). Remarks at the Radcliffe Day luncheon [Speech]. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/fight-for-the-things-that-you-care-about-but-do-it-in-a-way