Top 197 Quotes & Sayings by Sonia Sotomayor
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American judge Sonia Sotomayor.
Last updated on November 22, 2024.
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.
I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.
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.
It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.
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.
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.
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.
I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.
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.
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.
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.
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.
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.
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.
You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
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.
I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started.
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.
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.
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.
Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means - and in any context, whether it's judicial or otherwise - I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.
We apply law to facts. We don't apply feelings to facts.
I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.
I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.
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.
Diabetes taught me discipline.
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.
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.
I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.
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.
I found in my experiences that it's not that men are consciously discriminating against promoting women, but I do believe as people we have self-images about what's good.
It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society.
The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
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.
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.
I'm young at heart. I'm young in spirit, and I'm still adventurous.
Reaching a conclusion has to start with what the parties are arguing, but examining in all situations carefully the facts as they prove them or not prove them, the record as they create it, and then making a decision that is limited to what the law says on the facts before the judge.
I was raised in a Bronx public housing project, but studied at two of the nation's finest universities. I did work as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting violent crimes that devastate our communities.
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.
A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.
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.
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.
Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.
Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.
Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.
I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.
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.
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.
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.
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