Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.
Sonia Sotomayor
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.
Sonia Sotomayor
My diabetes is such a central part of my life… it did teach me discipline… it also taught me about moderation… I’ve trained myself to be super-vigilant… because I feel better when I am in control.
Sonia Sotomayor
It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.
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
My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.
Sonia Sotomayor
Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.
Sonia Sotomayor
We educated, privileged lawyers have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, both legal and economic justice.
Sonia Sotomayor
I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.
Sonia Sotomayor
The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
Sonia Sotomayor
The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
Sonia Sotomayor
Diabetes taught me discipline.
Sonia Sotomayor
When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates’ parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.
Sonia Sotomayor
I savor life. When you have anything that threatens life… it prods you into stepping back and really appreciating the value of life and taking from it what you can.
Sonia Sotomayor
When I’m concentrating, I can be fixed in place for hours. In fact, there was a joke in my office that everybody would come and chat outside my door because they knew – no matter how loud they talked – if I was concentrating, it would not disturb me at all.
Sonia Sotomayor
I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.
Sonia Sotomayor
There are uses to adversity, and they don’t reveal themselves until tested. Whether it’s serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.
Sonia Sotomayor
With my academic achievement in high school, I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that’s been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that.
Sonia Sotomayor
It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That’s what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.
Sonia Sotomayor
If you’re poor, you don’t often live near a good school. If it’s a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.
Sonia Sotomayor
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.
Sonia Sotomayor
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.
Sonia Sotomayor
I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.
Sonia Sotomayor
You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will – undoubtedly – fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I’m just not going to let this get me down.
Sonia Sotomayor
If your child marches to a different beat, a different drummer, you might just have to go along with that music. Help them achieve what’s important to them.
Sonia Sotomayor
If I write a book where all I’ve ever experienced is success, people won’t take a positive lesson from it. In being candid, I have to own up to my own failures, both in my marriage and in my work environment.
Sonia Sotomayor
A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.
Sonia Sotomayor
I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.
Sonia Sotomayor
We have to look and ensure that we’re paying attention to what we’re doing, so that we don’t reflexively institute processes and procedures that exclude people without thought.
Sonia Sotomayor
I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
Sonia Sotomayor
An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke – although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.
Sonia Sotomayor
Being a justice. If you love law the way I do… you’re given the job of a lifetime… you’re permitted to address the most important legal questions of the country, and sometimes the world. And in doing so, you make a difference in people’s lives.
Sonia Sotomayor
I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.
Sonia Sotomayor
You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
Sonia Sotomayor
The schools that suffer are the schools in, in poor neighborhoods. They are the neighborhoods with the greatest need, with the parents struggling to work and to make ends meet. They don’t have enough resources to give, they don’t have enough resources to pay more, and these are the neighborhoods that go first.
Sonia Sotomayor
I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.
Sonia Sotomayor
I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.
Sonia Sotomayor
All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.
Sonia Sotomayor
Oh my God, I don’t think you can say anyone looks forward to controversy.
Sonia Sotomayor
I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences.
Sonia Sotomayor
I think it’s important to move people beyond just dreaming into doing. They have to be able to see that you are just like them, and you made it.
Sonia Sotomayor
My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
Sonia Sotomayor
I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.
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
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
So many people grew up with challenges, as I did. There weren’t always happy things happening to me or around me. But when you look at the core of goodness within yourself – at the optimism and hope – you realize it comes from the environment you grew up in.
Sonia Sotomayor
I stand on the shoulders of countless people, yet there is one extraordinary person who is my life aspiration. That person is my mother, Celina Sotomayor.
Sonia Sotomayor
What’s quote-unquote a ‘good’ lawyer, doctor, or whatever the profession is. And if you’re a male who grew up professionally in a male-dominated profession, then your image of what a good lawyer is a male image.
Sonia Sotomayor
I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. Judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart. They don’t determine the law. Congress makes the law. The job of a judge is to apply the law.
Sonia Sotomayor
I’m young at heart. I’m young in spirit, and I’m still adventurous.
Sonia Sotomayor
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
Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.
Sonia Sotomayor
Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.
Sonia Sotomayor