Patricia Millett Quotes

I try to do two moot courts for every Supreme Court case (and one to two for courts of appeals), and to ensure I am being mooted by people who know the Supreme Court well and are coming to the case fresh.

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.

When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me make demands of myself that I would not otherwise make.

The point of college is more to acquire skills than to acquire domain knowledge. One of the skills that is going to be most necessary: you have to be able to read with rigor and write with clarity. You have to be able to communicate. To make an argument, whether it's in a written piece or in front of a group of people.

I learned how to order my thoughts, and most important, learned how to develop a plan. I discovered the power of a plan. If you can plan it out, and it seems logical to you, you can do it. And that was the secret to success.

It has become more important than ever that we teach students how to do research, and how to evaluate different sources of information. (Jimmy Wales, IB World, 68, Sept. 2013, p.10. )

The most successful scientists in the history of the world are those who posed the right questions

There are many ways to be influential. You can work for politicians or in government and make a difference. And for young women who are interested in running for office, you just have to decide you're going to follow Eleanor Roosevelt's maxim about growing skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros, and you have to be incredibly well-prepared - better prepared [than a man], actually - and you have to figure out how you're going to present yourself, and you have to have a support group around you, because it can be really a brutal experience.

Remember that it is not the lawyer who knows the most law, but the one who best prepares his case, who wins.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

We put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.

Do your homework and keep good files. Know the background and biases of your sources.

I happen to like debating, and I like to debate like a lawyer, and I can argue any points to death, and I will.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

If we wanted to make it the way I imagined I knew that we would have to wake up earlier and start very early. So we prep like crazy. And the competition you have is like Avatar, you have Star Wars, you have all the big Marvel stuff. So if you want to come in the race, you know, don't be pretentious.

Little things make the difference. Everyone is well prepared in the big things, but only the winners perfect the little things.

It just shows you have come prepared to play and ready to execute. It doesn't give you that much comfort when it's early and you still have another two and a half to three quarters to go. You better keep playing. But it is a positive, it gives you energy and it gives you a little boost like that.

How often we all have heard speakers begin by calling the attention of the audience to their lack of preparation or lack of ability. If you are not prepared, the audience will probably discover it without your assistance.

There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.

Therefore, O students, study mathematics and do not build without foundations.

We need to have preparation to win. A disciplined team will win more close games over a period of time.

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.