Sonia Sotomayor quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Sonia Sotomayor on Wise Famous Quotes.

The first case I sat on ... was Citizens United. Talk about being thrown in. Needless to say, if I was scared before, I was terrified.

When you come from a background like mine, where you're entering worlds that are so different than your own, you have to be afraid.

Oh my God, I don't think you can say anyone looks forward to controversy.

Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted.

If the issue is letting the states experiment and letting the society have more time to figure out its direction, why is taking a case now the answer?

Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.

A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.

A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. Page 115

When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started.

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

He was teaching the common-law rule against perpetuities, which limits how far into the future a will can control a line of inheritance.

Diabetes taught me discipline.

I don't prejudge.

[T]he habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.

I think being a Catholic made me a better person. It taught me how to choose good over evil, and how to be a more caring human being.

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.

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

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.

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

The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.

You cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.

I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.

Don't mistake politeness for lack of strength.

To have a romance, you have to have time. I'm a justice. I've written a book. The guy's gonna have to wait until I'm a little bit freer.

I don't prejudge issues. I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.

You've got to get your education! It's the only way to get ahead in the world.

I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.

You can't say: This much love is worth this much misery. They're not opposites that cancel each other out; they're both true at the same time.

You make your life choices understanding that you might and do have to work harder to prove yourself.

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.

Good people can do bad things, make bad decisions. It doesn't make them bad people.

[On the desert:] The wind was a constant, and when you paid attention, it seemed like the earth's own breathing.

There are no bystanders in life [ ... ] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.

I got a label because I was Hispanic and a woman and [therefore] I had to be liberal.

I've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.

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

I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.

I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.

Achievement was all very well, but it was the process, not

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.

I do think there is a value in the services of judges for long periods of time.

Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.

It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.

Even though Article IV of the Constitution says that treaties are the 'supreme law of the land', in most instances they're not even law.

The bride Celina and her groom Omar, with Junior, now Dr. Sotomayor. As my first official act,

Virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in heaven.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

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

Remember that no one succeeds alone. Never walk alone in your future paths.

I felt like everyones second choice, which is why a compliment could catch me off guard. Page 106

You can't dream unless you know what the possibilities are.

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

Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.

People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible. Page 1.

I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.

The best I could say about third grade was that it was a more or less continuous state of dread.

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

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

I am willing to bet that there are some Puerto Ricans who don't know about [their status].

To me, lawyering is the height of service - and being involved in this profession is a gift.

All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.

I'm young at heart. I'm young in spirit, and I'm still adventurous.

I couldn't even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita's sadness.

There are no bystanders in this life.

I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

We apply law to facts. We don't apply feelings to facts.

Every people has a past, but the dignity of a history comes when a community of scholars devotes itself to chronicling and studying that past.

Sometimes it gets boring. No justice is supposed to say that. But, you know, there's drudgery in every job you're going to do.

I think that the day a justice forgets that each decision comes at a cost to someone, then I think you start losing your humanity.