Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power. In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, then-President Trump allegedly “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” despite being “notified repeatedly” by his closest advisers “that his claims were untrue." When dozens of courts swiftly rejected these claims, Trump allegedly “pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors” in his favor. It is alleged that he went so far as to threaten one state election official with criminal prosecution if the official did not “‘find’ 11,780 votes” Trump needed to change the election result in that state. When state officials repeatedly declined to act outside their legal authority and alter their state election processes, Trump and his co-conspirators purportedly developed a plan to disrupt and displace the legitimate election certification process by organizing fraudulent slates of electors.

If you are palpably present in the moment, continuously mindful of and responsive to your listeners, they will follow where you lead.

But 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. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.

memory by nature is selective and colored by emotion.

Government doesn’t do, people do,” she said. “It’s people who make laws, it’s people who change laws. It’s people who make things happen. So my question is, what are you going to do to make the government more representative? It won’t change unless we change it.

But once I realized that my intense focus might have blinded me to certain cues at home, I couldn’t help examining myself for unremarked changes as well.

Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse.

If you shout too loudly and too often, people tend to cover their ears. Take it too far and you risk that nothing will be heard over the report of rifles and hoofbeats.

Dressing badly has been a refuge much of my life, a way of compelling others to engage with my mind, not my physical presence. Page. 283

I could see that troubling the waters was occasionally necessary to bring attention to the urgency of some problem. But this style of political expression sometimes becomes an end in itself and can lose potency if used routinely. If you shout too loudly and too often, people tend to cover their ears. Take it too far and you risk that nothing will be heard over the report of rifles and hoofbeats.

I scheduled the lessons, rolled up the carpet and committed myself to learning salsa. No longer would I sit there like a potted plant watching others on the floor. The gawky uncoordinated Sonia would make peace with herself in motion.

[T]he more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.

the difference between winning and losing came down to the appeal by emotion rather than fact alone.

The Latino community anchored me, but I didn't want it to isolate me from the full extent of what Princeton had to offer, including engagement with the larger community. Page 148

I’d always believed people can change; very few are carved in stone or beyond redemption. All my life I’ve looked around me and asked: What can I learn here? What qualities in this friend, this mentor, even this rival, are worth emulating? What in me needs to change?