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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

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Sonia Sotomayor
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: June 25
Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
University Teacher
The Bronx
New York City
Sonia Maria Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor
Truth
Wouldn
Cultivated
Without
Since
Cared
Came
Existential
Family
Survived
Everyone
Independence
Felt
Deeply
Perceiving
Ends
Adults
Depended
Around
Childhood
Unreliable

More quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

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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.
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All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.
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The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
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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.
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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
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The idea of a commonwealth relationship is alien to most people but I think that's true generally.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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If I go home, get a gun, come back and shoot you, that may not be legal under New York law because you would have alternative ways to defend.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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.
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I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Sonia Sotomayor
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My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.
Sonia Sotomayor
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The best I could say about third grade was that it was a more or less continuous state of dread.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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There are no bystanders in life [...] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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