Top 100 Sotomayor Quotes
#1. To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, you'd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.
Noah Feldman
#2. Sonia Sotomayor is uniquely and exquisitely sensitive to race issues because she is a Latina.
Dahlia Lithwick
#3. In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
Al Franken
#4. The bride Celina and her groom Omar, with Junior, now Dr. Sotomayor. As my first official act,
Sonia Sotomayor
#5. 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
#6. Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as 'a wise Latina' trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism.
Camille Paglia
#7. With one decision, Judge Sotomayor changed the entire dispute. Her ruling rescued the 1995 baseball season and forced the parties to resume real negotiations.
David Cone
#8. Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.
Wendy E. Long
#9. For weeks, [Sonia] Sotomayor had seen drafts of Ginsburg's opinion as it circulated among the justices. She knew she was about to be a public target. But she would have the courage of her convictions - perhaps stubbornly, misguidedly - yet with confidence enough to be the one in an 8-1 vote.
Joan Biskupic
#10. We made history when President Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a proud Latina, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. And as the President likes to say, 'Every single one of them wasn't just the best Latino for the job, but the best person for the job.'
Charlie Gonzalez
#11. I understand that during [Sonia Sotomayor's] career, she's written hundreds and hundreds of opinions. I haven't read a single one of them, and if I'm fortunate before we end this, I won't have to read one of them.
Harry Reid
#12. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#13. Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she'll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she'll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay?
Sonia Sotomayor
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. You cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.
Sonia Sotomayor
#17. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#18. The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.
Sonia Sotomayor
#19. It's fine to be on the side of the little guy, but he too will ultimately suffer if the health and concerns of the greater body he belongs to are neglected.
Sonia Sotomayor
#20. I am willing to bet that there are some Puerto Ricans who don't know about [their status].
Sonia Sotomayor
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. [On the desert:] The wind was a constant, and when you paid attention, it seemed like the earth's own breathing.
Sonia Sotomayor
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#29. 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
#30. Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.
Sonia Sotomayor
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.
Sonia Sotomayor
#34. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#35. 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
#36. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#37. 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
#38. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#39. I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Sonia Sotomayor
#40. [T]he habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.
Sonia Sotomayor
#41. It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.
Sonia Sotomayor
#42. You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
Sonia Sotomayor
#43. 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
#44. I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.
Sonia Sotomayor
#45. I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.
Sonia Sotomayor
#46. 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
#47. I felt like everyones second choice, which is why a compliment could catch me off guard. Page 106
Sonia Sotomayor
#48. 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
#49. I do think there is a value in the services of judges for long periods of time.
Sonia Sotomayor
#51. I've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.
Sonia Sotomayor
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. As for the possibility of 'having it all,' career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one of the other is somehow deficient.
Sonia Sotomayor
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. There's a great variety of people in Washington, but I think because of the great concentration of people in New York, that variety is more visible. You walk the streets and there are people of every color, shape and size, ethnic background, religion, it doesn't matter. It's always present.
Sonia Sotomayor
#58. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#59. I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.
Sonia Sotomayor
#60. 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?
Sonia Sotomayor
#61. All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.
Sonia Sotomayor
#62. I accept the proposition that ... to judge is an exercise of power and because ... there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives
no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging, I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.
Sonia Sotomayor
#63. Oh my God, I don't think you can say anyone looks forward to controversy.
Sonia Sotomayor
#64. It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.
Sonia Sotomayor
#65. 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
#66. I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.
Sonia Sotomayor
#67. Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.
Sonia Sotomayor
#68. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#70. 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
#71. I visit the island [Puerto Rico] as often as I humanly can. And I visit with community as frequently as possible, given the demands on me. I meet with kids. I meet with adults. I try to spend time and to listen to people talk about their lives.
Sonia Sotomayor
#72. I am growing to love DC.This [Washington] is a beautiful city. I think every citizen should come see their capital. A lot of the museums are free, there are restaurants that are reasonably priced.
Sonia Sotomayor
#73. The tatters of old stories are tangled, weathered, muted by long-held silences that succeeded loud feuds, and sometimes no doubt re-dyed a more flattering color.
Sonia Sotomayor
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#78. 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
#79. [T]he more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.
Sonia Sotomayor
#80. 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
#81. Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared.
Sonia Sotomayor
#82. Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.
Sonia Sotomayor
#83. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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.
Sonia Sotomayor
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. Kevin defended him. The parish in Yonkers was 100 percent Irish, he rationalized, and the priest had no choice but to affirm his community's values. I disagreed. Bigotry is not a value.
Sonia Sotomayor
#90. A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.
Sonia Sotomayor
#91. 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
#92. People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible. Page 1.
Sonia Sotomayor
#93. When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started.
Sonia Sotomayor
#94. I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.
Sonia Sotomayor
#95. Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.
Sonia Sotomayor
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. In every position that I've been in, there have been naysayers who don't believe I'm qualified or who don't believe I can do the work. And I feel a special responsibility to prove them wrong.
Sonia Sotomayor
#99. I've always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.
Sonia Sotomayor
#100. 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
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