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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I couldn’t even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita’s sadness.”

“The first case I sat on... was Citizens United. Talk about being thrown in. Needless to say, if I was scared before, I was terrified.”

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

“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.”

“We have to look and ensure that we're paying attention to what we're doing, so that we don't reflexively institute processes and procedures that exclude people without thought.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I barely saw my mother, and the mom I saw was often angry and unhappy. The mother I grew up with is not the mother I know now. It's not the mother she became after my father died, and that's been the greatest prize of my life.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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