Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

I think it's worth putting energy into affirmative action in terms of having diversity in positions of power because the door was shut for so long.

Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice. Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls for social relief.

The only way you get to the goal of color blindness is to be color conscious along the way.

We suspect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

But even race-neutral policies and recruitment efforts designed to achieve greater diversity are, in the end, not race neutral.

I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.

Equality means nothing unless incorporated into the institutions.

Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

There are two reasons to pursue diversity and inclusion. One, because you believe one group has benefitted from hundreds of years of discrimination, or two, maybe you don't like that women make 73 cents on the dollar compared to men.

Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.

I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

I'm always excited when I make it on anyone's list - even if it's for affirmative action. My attitude is, 'Am I the token woman on this list? Because I'll take it.'

If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity?

That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing.

Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

In our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world.