Home > Author > Sonia Sotomayor
101 " I have feared, at times, that my self-reliance, even more than my prominence, might prove hard for any man to take. "
― Sonia Sotomayor , My Beloved World
102 " Be diplomatic but direct, I told myself. I don’t tend to bang people over the head, but some situations require a bit of boldness "
103 " It’s fine to be on the side of the little guy, but he too will ultimately suffer if the health and concerns of the greater body he belongs to are neglected. "
104 " I’ve always turned the families of friends into family of my own. The roots of this practice are buried deep in my childhood, in the broad patterns of Puerto Rican culture, in the particular warmth of Abuelita’s embrace "
105 " I have followed my mother’s approach to family, refusing to limit myself to accidents of birth, blood, and marriage "
106 " THERE ARE no bystanders in this life. "
107 " as for the possibility of “having it all,” career and family, with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one or the other is somehow deficient. To say that a stay-at-home mom has betrayed her potential is no less absurd than to suggest that a woman who puts career first is somehow less a woman. During "
108 " the confidence that comes of having seen life from all sides. "
109 " time came. Or so I was later told. Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in heaven. To succeed in this world, you have to be known to people. Nevertheless, "
110 " I’ve lived most of my life inescapably aware that it is precious and finite. "
111 " To doubt the worth of minority students' achievement when they succeed is really only to present another face of the prejudice that would deny them a chance even to try. It is the same prejudice that insists all those destined for success must be cast from the same mold as those who have succeeded before them, a view that experience has already proven a fallacy. "
112 " was then I first saw how difficult it was to energize a community that felt marginal and voiceless in the larger discourse of a democracy. "
113 " Their chances of escaping from the underclass, from the vicious cycle of poverty, were no better than those of their similarly alienated black neighbors and probably worse for those who didn’t speak English "
114 " Not every experiment is a success. That’s the nature of doing science.” The nature of doing many things, I might add: success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared. "
115 " I’d always believed people can change; very few are carved in stone or beyond redemption. All my life I’ve looked around me and asked: What can I learn here? What qualities in this friend, this mentor, even this rival, are worth emulating? What in me needs to change? "
116 " The bride Celina and her groom Omar, with Junior, now Dr. Sotomayor. As my first official act, "
117 " Each death of someone close to me has come as a slap, reminding me again of my own mortality, compelling me to ask: What am I accomplishing? Is my life meaningful? When Abuelita died, I felt spurred to study even harder in "
118 " Read Margaret Mead!” I yell at them. “In certain tribes in Papua New Guinea, it’s completely reversed. What you consider male, the women do. And what women do here, the men do over there. "
119 " a life of perpetual internal compromise that leaves you always feeling torn, neglectful by turns of one or the other. "
120 " Each death of someone close to me has come as a slap, reminding me again of my own mortality, compelling me to ask: What am I accomplishing? Is my life meaningful? "