I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.
Sonia SotomayorRead
I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.
Interpretation
Approaching each situation without preconceived notions leads to better understanding and outcomes.
Sonia Sotomayor emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open mind when faced with new challenges or cases. By treating each situation as unique, she highlights the value of fresh perspectives and adaptability, which can lead to more thoughtful and informed decisions.
In practice
In a classroom setting, a teacher might use this quote to encourage students to embrace new ideas during discussions.
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.
The mind always hankers for more and more. If you have money, it hankers for more money; if you have prestige, it hankers for more prestige; if you have knowledge, it hankers for more knowledge. Mind lives in the 'more.'
It's true that no policy fully survives first contact. But if you don't spend time anticipating the shots you are likely to take, you wind up flailing about wildly.
What a mistake those who do not hope make! Judas made a huge blunder the day in which he sold Christ for 30 denarii, but he made an even bigger one when he thought that his sin was too great to be forgiven. No sin is too big: any wretchedness, however great, can always be enclosed in infinite mercy.
Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.
I've found time can heal most anything and you just might find who you're supposed to be.
The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.
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