Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

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Sonia Sotomayor

Profession : Judge

Birth : June 25, 1954

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.

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

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

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 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.

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 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

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

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

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

Sonia Sotomayor

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.

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

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

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.

Sonia Sotomayor

Diabetes taught me discipline.

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

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.

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

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

Sonia Sotomayor