Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

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 unsuspected strengths. It doesn't always, of course: I've seen life beat people down until they can't get up. But I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring 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

I will be judged as a human being by what readers find here. There are hazards to openness, but they seem minor compared with the possibility that some readers may find comfort, perhaps even inspiration, from a close examination of how an ordinary person, with strengths and weaknesses like anyone else, has managed an extraordinary journey. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

So they can create a class they don't like-here, homosexuals-or a class that they consider is suspect in the marriage category, and they can create that class and decide benefits on that basis when they themselves have no interest in the actual institution of marriage as married? ~ Sonia Sotomayor

One thing has not changed: to doubt the worth of minority students' achievement when they succeed is really only to present another face of the prejudice that would deny them a chance to even try. It is the same prejudice that insists all those destined for success must be cast from the same mold as those who have succeeded before them, a view that experience has already proven a fallacy. ~ 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

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I listened very, very carefully to the world around me to pick up the signals of when trouble was coming. Not that I could stop it. But it made me observant. That was helpful when I became a lawyer, because I knew how to read people's signals. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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 feared. Page 135 ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

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

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

If the system is broken, my inclination is to fix it rather than to fight it. I have faith in the process of the law, and if it is carried out fairly, I can live with the results, whatever they may be. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in heaven. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

Seeing my mother get back to her studies was all the proof I needed that a chain of emotion can persuade when one forged of logic won't hold. But more important was her example that a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. It was something I would remember often in years ahead, whenever faced with fears that I wasn't smart enough to succeed. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

I would warn any minority student today against the temptations of self-segregation: take support and comfort from your own group as you can, but don't hide within it. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

The Latino community anchored me, but I didn't want it to isolate me from the full extent of what Princeton had to offer, including engagement with the larger community. Page 148 ~ 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. Page 188 ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they. ~ 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 strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I've never had my dexterity called into question, but I think if that was ever the case, I could acquit myself by tossing a ball back and forth horizontally between my hands. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I could see that troubling the waters was occasionally necessary to bring attention to the urgency of some problem. But this style of political expression sometimes becomes an end in itself and can lose potency if used routinely. If you shout too loudly and too often, people tend to cover their ears. Take it too far and you risk that nothing will be heard over the report of rifles and hoofbeats. ~ 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

When RBG fretted over the first dry opinion the chief justice assigned her, O'Connor gave her a pep talk. As RBG read that opinion on the bench, O'Connor, who had dissented in the case, passed her a note. "This is your first opinion for the Court," she had written. "It is a fine one, I look forward to many more." Remembering the comfort that note gave her on such a nerve wracking day, RBG did the same for the next two women to join the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. ~ Irin Carmon

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

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

I accepted what the Sisters taught in religion class: that God is loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving. That message didn't jibe with adults smacking kids. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

There are no bystanders in this life. ~ 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

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

There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects. ~ 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 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

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

Justice [Sonia]Sotomayor said, "Let's talk - you want to talk about the tax power."And I got like a 10-minute run on the tax power. And, boy, was I glad I did because I was able to get across this idea that, yes, this is a narrower ground on which you can affirm it. And I think everybody agrees. I think even the dissenting justices ultimately in the case agreed that, if Congress had expressly called it a tax, it would be indisputably constitutional. ~ Donald Verrilli Jr.

The Parkchester Library was my haven. To thumb through the card catalog was to touch an infinite bounty, more books than I could ever possibly exhaust. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

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

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty. But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility. ~ 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

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 firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

When you have strong views about how to approach thinking about the law, then that view is going to lead to certain results in certain situations. And so people seem to think this predictability is based on some kind of partisan political view. But it's not. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

The persistence or failure of human relationships cannot be predicted by any set of objective or universal criteria. We are all limited, highly imperfect beings, worthy in some dimensions, deficient in others, and if we would understand how any of our connections survive, we would do well to look first to what is good in each of us. ~ 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

Achievement was all very well, but it was the process, not ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up. ~ 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 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

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

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

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

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

Her rocking chair of carved wood and woven cane tilted between this world and another that was beyond imagining, wafting scents of talcum and medicinal tea, auras of lace-edged santos whose eyes rolled up to a heaven too close for comfort. ~ 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 accomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself. At each stage of my life, I've had a pretty clear notion of my needs and of what I was ready for. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

The worst thing you want is a willy-nilly judge who is swayed by the political whims of the era or the time. What you want is a judge who is thinking about what he or she is doing and is thinking about it in a principled way. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I've never wanted to get adjusted to my income, because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it's not modest at all. I have no right to complain. ~ 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

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

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

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

I think there's a large segment of the mainland population that does not really understand the number of territories that are part of the United States. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

Books are keys that unlock the wisdom of yesterday and open the door to tomorrow ~ Sonia Sotomayor

I don't prejudge. ~ 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

Diabetes taught me discipline. ~ 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've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision? ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Many of my classmates have happier memories of Blessed Sacrament, and in time I would find my own satisfaction in the classroom. My first years there, however, I met with little warmth. In part, it was that the nuns were critical of working mothers, and their disapproval was felt by latchkey kids. The irony of course was that my mother wouldn't have been working such long hours if not to pay for that education she believed was the key to any aspirations for a better life. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Even before the publication of her bestseller, [Sonia] Sotomayor was a different breed: approachable, human, like the people who came out to greet her. Her book brought her to another level of celebrity and public adulation. She wrote about her 'darker experiences' growing up. She wrote that she had a pudgy nose, a mop of hair, and that it would take most of her adult life to feel pulled together. She became an everywoman with everywoman doubts. ~ Joan Biskupic

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

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

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

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

As difficult an environment as the DA's Office could be, I saw no overarching conspiracy against women. The unequal treatment was usually more a matter of old habits dying hard. ~ 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

There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy, and how far we want to protect it and from whom. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

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

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. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law. ~ Sonia Sotomayor