Quote

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.

Sonia Sotomayor

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Dream
Value
Real
Coming
Taught
Within
Stirring
Values
Aspire
Experience
Odds
True
According
Cannot
Dreams

More quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

Image
Remember that no one succeeds alone. Never walk alone in your future paths.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
I hope in my book [My Beloved World], that the sense that I really feel connected comes through.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
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
Image
I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Until we reach equality in education, we can't reach equality in the larger society.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
Through reading, I escaped the bad parts of my life in the South Bronx. And, through books, I got to travel the world and the universe. It, to me, was a passport out of my childhood and it remains a way - through the power of words - to change the world.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
When you come from a background like mine, where you're entering worlds that are so different than your own, you have to be afraid.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
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
Image
I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
I had many reasons for writing memoir but among them was the hope that every Latino child and adult would find something familiar in it.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.
Sonia Sotomayor
Image
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
Image
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