Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

Author Image

Sonia Sotomayor

Profession : Judge

Birth : June 25, 1954

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 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 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

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

All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. I know.

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

I barely saw my mother, and the mom I saw was often angry and unhappy. The mother I grew up with is not the mother I know now. It's not the mother she became after my father died, and that's been the greatest prize of my life.

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

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

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

I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.

Sonia Sotomayor

In examining witnesses, I learned to ask general questions so as to elicit details with powerful sensory associations: the colors, the sounds, the smells that lodge an image in the mind and put the listener in the burning house.

Sonia Sotomayor

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.

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor