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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.

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
Asks
Sounds
Smells
Powerful
Details
Examining
Sound
Smell
Listener
Elicit
House
Image
Listeners
Lodge
Mind
Questions
Association
Lodges
General
Colors
Associations
Color
Witness
Witnesses
Learned
Burning
Sensory

More quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

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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
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I don't have a professional aspiration. But I do have a personal one: I want to continue growing as a person. I want to reach out more to people, learn more from them. Ultimately, I would like to be a great justice that people remember with respect and fondness.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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?
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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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.
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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I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.
Sonia Sotomayor
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The President [Barack Obama] had suggested that I not watch the news during the confirmation process. I assiduously followed his advice.
Sonia Sotomayor
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A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.
Sonia Sotomayor
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I hope in my book [My Beloved World], that the sense that I really feel connected comes through.
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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You can only stay connected if you feel connected.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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As you may know from my life story, my cousin who was my soul mate went to a public school. And he died of AIDS. Would I and my brother have been able to resist the lure of drugs in the surrounding schools? Who knows.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Without question, so many people, throughout my life, never think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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