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The challenges I have faced – among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother – are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

Sonia Sotomayor

If you’re poor, you don’t often live near a good school. If it’s a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Children Competition Goodness Live Ourselves Poor Preparation Program
Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Failure Fear Greatness Reward Success Teacher
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.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Alcohol Father Language Limitation Mom Myself Parents Sick Talk
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. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Attachment Community Different Growth Home Language Parents See Shame Talk Yourself
Diabetes taught me discipline.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Discipline Myself One Liner Sick Teaching
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

Acceptance Culture Fear Knowledge Law Myself Simplicity Understand
Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Challenge Growth Life Modesty Myself Rich
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

Economics Education Justice Legal Moral Privilege Professional Representation Society
Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Aspiration Dreams Experience Reality True Value
The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Fire Forever Myself
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.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Break Carry Fight Live Myself Process Result System
I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Focus Myself Negative Positive
The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Community Diversity Feeling
I have always been actively involved in my community, belonging to organizations that promote the interests of Latinos. But I also know that the issues we confront are the same issues, in many respects, as the larger community. So what we do helps not just us but everybody.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Active Community Help Issues Myself Organization Respect
To me, lawyering is the height of service – and being involved in this profession is a gift.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Gift Law Myself Professional Service
I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there.
SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Accomplishment Action Institution Myself Quality Thinking

The challenges I have faced – among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother – are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

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The challenges I have faced – among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother – are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

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Popular Authors

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