I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.
Sonia SotomayorRead
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.
Interpretation
Acknowledging fear is part of stepping into unfamiliar environments.
Sonia Sotomayor emphasizes the need to confront fear when entering diverse and unfamiliar spaces, especially for those who come from different backgrounds. This sentiment reflects the struggles and courage necessary to navigate challenges that arise when stepping outside one's comfort zone, showcasing the importance of resilience in the face of adversity.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming challenges in higher education.
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.
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, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.
To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.
What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, 'Oh, she couldn't possibly be that.'
We call for the end of bigotry as we know it. The end of racism as we know it. The end of child abuse in the family as we know it. The end of sexism as we know it. The end of homophobia as we know it. We stand for freedom as we have yet to know it. And we will not be denied.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men β not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
But what of black women?... I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.
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