“Without question, so many people, throughout my life, never think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States. Many people have no idea what the relationship is between Puerto Rico and the United States. And certainly, I have been asked if we are citizens.”

Until we reach equality in education, we can’t reach equality in the larger society.

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.

There are no bystanders in this life.

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

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

Don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.

Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.

I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.

Remember that no one succeeds alone. Never walk alone in your future paths.

You can’t dream unless you know what the possibilities are.

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.

It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

If I write a book where all I’ve ever experienced is success, people won’t take a positive lesson from it. In being candid, I have to own up to my own failures, both in my marriage and in my work environment.

Some people choose not to engage the battle and then don’t seek out that kind of success. And others do.

A role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, “Yes, someone like me can do this.”

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.

In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren’t much happier about taxation with representation.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen’s behavior, it was written to restrain the government’s behavior.

If there’s a silver bullet in the battle to recapture Albany, it is the re-engagement of our citizens. This capital has become a physical metaphor for the isolation and alienation of our people.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious.

I have dual citizenship.