Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

You always wonder whether the attacks on my capabilities came from an honest evaluation of my accomplishments or from stereotypical presumptions that we, people of color, just can't do it, for some reason. This is, for an accomplished Latino, an accomplished African American, an accomplished anyone who disproves stereotypes, it's a constant battle in your life.

I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.

People in some situations act worse than animals. You can't be a judge if you try to be a robot. Because then you're not going to be able to look at both sides, and hear both sides. At the same time, if you're being ruled by emotion, then you're not being fair and impartial.

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.

We apply law to facts. We don't apply feelings to facts.

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.

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.

I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. Judges can't rely on what's in their heart. It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law.

I have always been actively involved in my community, belonging to organizations that promote the interests of Latinos. But I also know that the issues we confront are the same issues, in many respects, as the larger community. So what we do helps not just us but everybody.

Sometimes, even if there was no useful advice to give, I saw that listening still helped.

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

I hope in my book [My Beloved World], that the sense that I really feel connected comes through.

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.

Don't mistake politeness for lack of strength.

People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible. Page 1.

As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 acomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself.

My mom loved the book [My beloved world] and she said to me, 'I never knew you had done so much.'

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 have had positive experiences with cameras. When I have been asked to join experiments using cameras in the courtroom, I have participated; I have volunteered.

Looking out at that crowd, I imagined those who had not yet arrived, minority students who, in years to come, would make this multitude of faces, the view from where I now stood, a little more various. If they could have heard me, I would have confided in them: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This is, for an accomplished Latino, an accomplished African American, an accomplished anyone who disproves stereotypes, it's a constant battle in your life.

The best I could say about third grade was that it was a more or less continuous state of dread.

You can't dream unless you know what the possibilities are.

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 don't stand by the understanding of that statement that I will ignore other facts or other experiences because I haven't had them. I do believe that life experiences are important to the process of judging - They help you to understand and listen - but that the law requires a result. And it would command you to the facts that are relevant to the disposition of the case.

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.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be.

Every lawyer, no matter whom they represent, is trying to help someone, whether it's a person, a corporation, a government entity, or a small or big business. To me, lawyering is the height of service - and being involved in this profession is a gift.

You can only stay connected if you feel connected.

I had many reasons for writing this book but among them was the hope that every Latino child and adult would find something familiar in it. And my hope is that when they finish reading the book, that they will come away with a renewed sense of pride in our culture and in who we are. We get a lot of strength from that [culture and identity] and we should be proud of it.

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

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 am eternally grateful to all of the Latino groups outside of the Puerto Rican community, but including the Puerto-Rican community, who came to support me during the process [of nomination].

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.