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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

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

More quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

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I was raised in a Bronx public housing project, but studied at two of the nation's finest universities. I did work as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting violent crimes that devastate our communities.
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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.
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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
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I am growing to love DC.This [Washington] is a beautiful city. I think every citizen should come see their capital. A lot of the museums are free, there are restaurants that are reasonably priced.
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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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I've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Every lawyer, no matter whom they represent, is trying to help someone, whether it's a person, a corporation, a government entity, or a small or big business. To me, lawyering is the height of service - and being involved in this profession is a gift.
Sonia Sotomayor
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When you marry young, you run the risk that you'll grow in different directions.
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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You make your life choices understanding that you might and do have to work harder to prove yourself.
Sonia Sotomayor
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I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.
Sonia Sotomayor
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I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there.
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
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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
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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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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
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The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.
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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This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
Sonia Sotomayor
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Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared.
Sonia Sotomayor