75 Sonia Sotomayor Quotes About Life, Equality and Justice

When it comes to powerful women, don’t count Sonia Sotomayor out. In 2009, she made history when she became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice. Since then, she has had a remarkable journey marked by resilience and dedication, and these 75 inspiring Sonia Sotomayor quotes make that clear.

However, her life wasn’t always in the spotlight. Instead, it was characterized by economic hardship and personal challenges as she grew up. Though, despite those obstacles, she excelled academically, earning her law degree from Yale University. Afterward, her career began as a prosecutor and later evolved to her being a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Her work ended up catching the attention of then-President Barack Obama, which is when he appointed her to the Supreme Court, where she quickly garnered respect for her insightful and empathetic approach to the law.

Now, 15 years later, she still proudly holds her position. Throughout her career, she has championed issues related to race, gender equality and civil rights, advocating for fairness and representation. Her voice remains an important force in shaping discussions today, reflecting both her profound understanding of the law and her dedication to improving the lives of others.

Sotomayor's words often emphasize empathy and the real-world impact of legal decisions, such as when she stated, “I strive never to forget that justice is what the people of this country expect and deserve.” Some of her most memorable and famous quotes highlight her dedication to ensuring that the law serves all individuals fairly, no matter who they are, what their background is or where they come from. 

So, to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and honor this inspiring leader, here are 75 quotes from Sonia Sotomayor.

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75 Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

1. “The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.”

2. “It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.”

3. “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.”

4. “Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.”

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

6. “You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will—undoubtedly—fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I'm just not going to let this get me down.”

7. “I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.”

8. “When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates’ parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different—there is a sense of shame attached to that.”

9. “To have a romance, you have to have time. I’m a justice. I’ve written a book. The guy’s gonna have to wait until I'm a little bit freer.”

10. “Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.”

11. “Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.”

12. I’m young at heart. I’m young in spirit, and I’m still adventurous.”

13. “I think it’s important to move people beyond just dreaming into doing. They have to be able to see that you are just like them, and you made it.”

14. “I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.”

15. “If your child marches to a different beat, a different drummer, you might just have to go along with that music. Help them achieve what's important to them.”

16. “I savor life. When you have anything that threatens life...it prods you into stepping back and really appreciating the value of life and taking from it what you can.”

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17. “We apply law to facts. We don’t apply feelings to facts.”

18. “Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven.”

19. “Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means—and in any context, whether it’s judicial or otherwise—I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.”

20. “I was a keen observer and listener. I picked up on clues. I figured things out logically, and I enjoyed puzzles. I loved the clear, focused feeling that came when I concentrated on solving a problem and everything else faded out.”

21. “I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.”

22. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.”

23. “I have faith in the process of the law, and if it is carried out fairly, I can live with the results, whatever they may be.”

24. “Whether it’s serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.”

25. “If the system is broken, my inclination is to fix it rather than to fight it.”

26. “It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.”

27. “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.”

28. “To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.”

29. “I am a very spiritual person. Maybe not traditionally religious in terms of Sunday Mass every week, that sort of thing.”

30. “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. I know.”

31. “No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence.”

32. “My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.”

33. “I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.”

34. “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.”

35. “It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That’s what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.”

36. “I’m a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.”

37. “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.”

38. “I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.”

39. “This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.”

40. “I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.”

41. “I don’t prejudge issues. I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.”

42. “We educated, privileged lawyers have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, both legal and economic justice.”

43. “I think that the day a justice forgets that each decision comes at a cost to someone, then I think you start losing your humanity.”

44. “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.”

45. “There are uses to adversity, and they don’t reveal themselves until tested.”

46. “I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences.”

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

48. “I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow, I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.”

49. “I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.”

50. “Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”

51. “I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. Judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the law. The job of a judge is to apply the law.”

52. “It’s not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it’s the law.”

53. “When I'm concentrating, I can be fixed in place for hours. In fact, there was a joke in my office that everybody would come and chat outside my door because they knew—no matter how loud they talked—if I was concentrating, it would not disturb me at all.”

54. “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

55. “So many people grew up with challenges, as I did. There weren’t always happy things happening to me or around me. But when you look at the core of goodness within yourself—at the optimism and hope— you realize it comes from the environment you grew up in.”

56. “You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.”

57. “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.”

58. “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.”

59. “Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.”

60. “All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.”

61. “The worst thing you want is a willy-nilly judge who is swayed by the political whims of the era or the time. What you want is a judge who is thinking about what he or she is doing and is thinking about it in a principled way.”

62. “I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government.”

63. “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.”

64. “My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

65. “I stand on the shoulders of countless people, yet there is one extraordinary person who is my life aspiration. That person is my mother, Celina Sotomayor.”

66. “Sometimes it gets boring. No justice is supposed to say that. But, you know, there's drudgery in every job you're going to do.”

67. “I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.”

68. “I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.”

69. “The schools that suffer are the schools in, in poor neighborhoods. They are the neighborhoods with the greatest need, with the parents struggling to work and to make ends meet. They don’t have enough resources to give, they don’t have enough resources to pay more, and these are the neighborhoods that go first.”

70. “I don’t prejudge.”

71. “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.”

72. “When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I’m talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started.”

73. “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.”

74. “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.”

75. “A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.”

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