Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

I came to accept during my freshman year that many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I'd feared.

Sonia Sotomayor
I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.

Sonia Sotomayor
Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.

Sonia Sotomayor
Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Sonia Sotomayor
I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.

Sonia Sotomayor
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women.

Sonia Sotomayor
As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.

Sonia Sotomayor
I have ventured to write more intimately about my personal life than is customary for a member of the Supreme Court, and with that candor comes a measure of vulnerability.

Sonia Sotomayor
The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.

Sonia Sotomayor
They were like two trees with buried roots so tangled that they inevitably leaned on each other, and also strangled each other a bit.

Sonia Sotomayor
Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared.

Sonia Sotomayor
I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.

Sonia Sotomayor
As for the possibility of 'having it all,' career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one of the other is somehow deficient.

Sonia Sotomayor
I have come to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect, and confidence.

Sonia Sotomayor
I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there.

Sonia Sotomayor
That tide of insecurity would come in and out over the years, sometimes stranding me for a while but occasionally lifting me just beyond what I thought I could acomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself.

Sonia Sotomayor
Dressing badly has been a refuge much of my life, a way of compelling others to engage with my mind, not my physical presence. Page. 283

Sonia Sotomayor
My mom used to say, You cannot experience what you cannot imagine... yet you always experience what you do imagine.

Sonia Sotomayor
A role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, Yes, someone like me can do this.

Sonia Sotomayor
There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested.

Sonia Sotomayor
How many times would a defendant's lawyer enter the courtroom before a session and ask each of the male clerks and paralegals around me, 'Are you the assistant in charge?' while I sat there invisible to him at the head of the table?

Sonia Sotomayor
Don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.

Sonia Sotomayor
The challenges I have faced—among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother—are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

Sonia Sotomayor
Sometimes, even if there was no useful advice to give, I saw that listening still helped.

Sonia Sotomayor
I understand Justice Scalia's jurisprudence to begin with a proposition that we should all agree to — namely, that judges should try to interpret the law correctly, and without personal or political bias.

Sonia Sotomayor
America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" – a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity – is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action.

Sonia Sotomayor
I was a keen observer and listener. I picked up on clues. I figured things out logically, and I enjoyed puzzles. I loved the clear, focused feeling that came when I concentrated on solving a problem and everything else faded out.

Sonia Sotomayor
But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is instirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize That the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.

Sonia Sotomayor
No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.

Sonia Sotomayor
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

Sonia Sotomayor