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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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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
Special
Responsibility
Wrong
Feel
Feels
Qualified
Work
Boss
Every
Prove
Believe
Position

More quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

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I've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.
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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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
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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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No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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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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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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All I can say is that with business and the interest of any party before me, I will consider and apply the law as it is written by Congress and informed by precedent.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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
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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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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 got a label because I was Hispanic and a woman and [therefore] I had to be liberal.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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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The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Even though Article IV of the Constitution says that treaties are the 'supreme law of the land,' in most instances they're not even law.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Until we reach equality in education, we can't reach equality in the larger society.
Sonia Sotomayor
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I got a message from one of my friends in Puerto Rico, who said, 'Sonia, there's nobody working in Puerto Rico - they're all glued to the television'. And I got a similar message from a friend in Spain.
Sonia Sotomayor
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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.
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