Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

I have the advantage of many perspectives as someone who has lived in different kinds of communities: as a woman, as someone who previously identified as a lesbian, as someone who is a person of color. I've had a lot of life, so that informs what I do.

I spent most of my career, including my time at McKinsey, never acknowledging that I was a woman. And, you know, fast forward - I'm 43 now - fitting in is not helping us.

I hope that every film I make has something to offer in the area of making people feel either vindicated or different in terms of who they are.

Diversity on the bench is critical. As practitioners, you need judges who 'get it!' We need judges who understand what discrimination feels like. We need judges who understand what inequality feels like. We need judges who understand the subtleties of unfair treatment and who are willing to call it out when they see it!

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.

It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.

I try to look for the good in everybody, regardless of the way they're labeled.

And God is always calling me to open myself to all kinds of people that I've never thought about before and also calling me on this inward spiritual journey.

I'm a fierce advocate for diversity. Always have been, always will be.

If you come from a place of love, and you're not saying, 'I'm better than you,' that's one thing that allows you to talk about different ethnicities. It's almost like laughing with each other.

I was fortunate enough to have an upbringing that made me more accepting of who I am.

We've known for a long time, and I think culturally we've accepted, that diversity is an important thing in the work of knowledge.

I love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. That exploration runs to compassion and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding of how weird and amazing life is.

People identify with other people for different reasons, and I personally am really comfortable around lesbians because, in some ways, we view women the same way.

It's important for youth, black youths particularly, to be able to fill in the blanks of themselves so they can know completely who they are, but also all the country to understand what this means: what the civil rights movement does to us as people. It is part of the journey that we must be on in order to become fully evolved human beings.

I feel the same way about Shondaland I feel about Africa and Greece. I feel pretty in both places. Men look at me like I'm a novelty, and women think I'm just cool. I feel absolutely at home immediately. I'm not altering myself to fit in. I'm walking in just as I am. And there are open arms stretched out to greet me.

The best companies will build culturally diverse leadership teams and workforces with divergent backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas.

Becoming a monster sometimes isn't a choice that you have. We're all that; we're all 'the other' in one way or another.

Diversity is strength. Our cinema and our art forms need to diversify so that it tells all stories, all perspectives.

Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.

I absorb energy, I absorb the good, the bad, I absorb everything. That's what makes me who I am.

My generation, we're so diverse in so many ways.

I encourage people to have those tough conversations just to educate yourself on what goes on and how we can create equality in the world and grow together as one.