242 Quotes by Sonia Sotomayor

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects.

A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights.

You make your life choices understanding that you might and do have to work harder to prove yourself.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.

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.