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" Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. "

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society. "

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" I don't prejudge. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" I've never wanted to get adjusted to my income, because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it's not modest at all. I have no right to complain. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" What's quote-unquote a 'good' lawyer, doctor, or whatever the profession is. And if you're a male who grew up professionally in a male-dominated profession, then your image of what a good lawyer is a male image. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" We apply law to facts. We don't apply feelings to facts. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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

" 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. "

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Sonia Sotomayor

" Being a justice. If you love law the way I do... you're given the job of a lifetime... you're permitted to address the most important legal questions of the country, and sometimes the world. And in doing so, you make a difference in people's lives. "

Sonia Sotomayor

" 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