Top 120 Sonia Sotomayor Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

103. “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

104. “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

105. “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.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

106. “So they can create a class they don’t like-here, homosexuals-or a class that they consider is suspect in the marriage category, and they can create that class and decide benefits on that basis when they themselves have no interest in the actual institution of marriage as married?”

— Sonia Sotomayor

107. “You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

108. “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

109. “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

110. “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

111. “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

112. “My Spanish was so deficient that I wasn’t even pronouncing my own name properly. She called me on it. “You have the most regal of Spanish names,” she said. “Don’t you ever let anybody mispronounce it. You are Sonia Sotomayor – Soh-toh-mah-yor – and anything less is disgraceful. Say it correctly, and wear it with pride.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

113. “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

114. “A line of reasoning could persuade, but so could a sequence of feelings. Constructing a chain of logic was one thing; building a chain of emotions required a different understanding. I.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

115. “Yo tenia quince anos cuando comprendi por que fracasaban las cosas: las personas no podian imaginar el punto de vista de los demas.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

116. “Books are keys that unlock the wisdom of yesterday and open the door to tomorrow.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

117. “If you want to change someone’s mind, you must understand what need shapes his or her opinion.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

118. “But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

119. “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 unsuspected strengths. It doesn’t always, of course: I’ve seen life beat people down until they can’t get up. But I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

120. “With every friend I’ve known, in every situation I’ve encountered, I have found something to learn. From a task as simple as boiling water, you can learn a worthwhile lesson. There is no experience that can’t avail something useful, be it only the discipline to manage adversity.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

121. “Few aspects of my work in the DA’s Office were more rewarding than to see what I had learned in childhood among the Latinos of the Bronx prove to be as relevant to my success as Ivy League schooling was.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

122. “If you held to principle so passionately, so inflexibly, indifferent in the particulars of circumstance – the full range of what human beings, with all their flaws and foibles, might endure or create – if you enthroned principle above even reason, weren’t you then abdicating the responsibilities of a thinking person?”

— Sonia Sotomayor

123. “Every people has a past, but the dignity of a history comes when a community of scholars devotes itself to chronicling and studying that past.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

124. “The closeness that I share now with my mother is deeply felt, but we learned it slowly and with effort, and for fear of the alternative.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

125. “With every friend I’ve known, in every situation I’ve encountered, I have found something to learn.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

126. “It would take me most of my life to feel remotely put together, and it’s still an effort.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

127. “I couldn’t even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita’s sadness.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

128. “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

129. “In the end, as I usually do, I trusted my instincts, although I was a bit surprised where they were leading me.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

130. “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