Sonia Sotomayor

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

“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...”

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

“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....”

“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'm young at heart. I'm young in spirit, and I'm still adventurous.”

“There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, d...”

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

“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 where...”

“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...”

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

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

“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.”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“We apply law to facts. We don't apply feelings to facts.”

“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 i...”

“The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.”

“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.”