Sonia Sotomayor

The challenges I have faced__mong them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother__re not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

...you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she'll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she'll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay?

[A]lthough wisdom is built on life experience, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted.

I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there. Page 188

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.

There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and the avoidance of cruelty. But I have never accepted the argument that principle is compromised by judging each situation on its own merits, with due appreciation of the idiosyncrasy of human motivation and fallibility.

The tatters of old stories are tangled, weathered, muted by long-held silences that succeeded loud feuds, and sometimes no doubt re-dyed a more flattering color.

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.

As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.

I've always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.

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 feared. Page 135