Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

You can't say: This much love is worth this much misery. They're not opposites that cancel each other out; they're both true at the same time.

virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in heaven. To succeed in this world, you have to be known to people.

Quiet pragmatism, of course, lacks the romance of vocal militancy. But I felt myself more a mediator than a crusader. My strengths were reasoning, crafting compromises, finding the good and the good faith on both sides of an argument, and using that to build a bridge. Always, my first question was, what's the goal? And then, who must be persuaded if it is to be accomplished? A respectful dialogue with one's opponent almost invariably goes further than a harangue outside his or her window. If you want to change someone's mind, you must understand what need shapes his or her opinion. To prevail, you must first listen.

memory by nature is selective and colored by emotion.

A line of reasoning could persuade, but so could a sequence of feelings. Constructing a chain of logic was one thing; building a chain of emotions required a different understanding.

temporary need for remedial help into a lifetime of minimal employment and poverty. The ASPIRA consent decree won by PRLDEF in 1974 established the right of students with limited English to receive bilingual education in New York City’s public schools.

eyes. A tenderness I have no name for rushes like a drug through my veins, as I realize that the absence of human touch has been, for so long, a burden carried unwittingly.

When a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become — whether lawyer, scientist, artist, or leader in any realm — her goal remains abstract. Such models as appear in books or on the news, however inspiring or revered, are ultimately too remote to be real, let alone influential. But a role model in the flesh provides more than an inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, “Yes, someone like me can do this.

ultimately, I know myself. At each stage of my life, I’ve had a pretty clear notion of my needs and of what I was ready for.

And he was utterly untainted by emotion.

There are things you may know in your heart for a long while without admitting them to conscious awareness, until, unexpectedly, something triggers an inescapable realization.

Good people can do bad things, make bad decisions. It doesn't make them bad people.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

Seeing the task in the context of another

What Nelson saw driving me arises from a different kind of aspiration: the desire to do for others, to help make things right for them. Strange ambition for a child? Some might say so, but I’ve been aware of it for as long as I can remember. Self-aggrandizing? I’ve never felt such release from the awkward hold of ego as when helping others. Reaction to early years in a house of pain? Perhaps, but at some point I let go of my compulsion to please: it’s my own standard of character that I need to meet. In any case, I’m sure of having learned it from others, my examples. And very good ones.