Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

I grew up below the poverty line; I didn't have as much as other people did. I think it made me stronger as a person, it built my character. Now I have a 4.0 grade point average and I want to go to college, and just become a better person.

Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.

I think life is very, very, very hard, and I've never had anything come super easy to me, no matter what people may think.

We had nothing, no money, when I was young. We lived in a council house. My dad struggled; my mum struggled. But that made me what I am. If I had everything on a plate from the start, maybe I would not have been a champion for 11 years.

I showed up in L.A. with $500 and a backpack and I stayed at a shelter, so nobody handed me anything. I worked for every single thing that I have.

If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship.

My family and I had to overcome a lot to get where we are today.

You know the things I went through as a youngster, coming into the business, all the good, the bad and the ugly that came. I'd had a rough life. I grew up single parent. My mom, she was like a father to me.

When I started out, I struggled, and I was broke a lot. But I'm glad I struggled, and I'm glad I was broke a lot.

As you know, I'm a black girl out of the projects of New York City, raised in a single parent home because my parents divorced very very young... welfare and homeless at four and then again at 16 and just not having the things or the necessary tools that society would say I needed to have in order to be any kind of success in life.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you're going. That's family values.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

To the stars through thorns.

You cannot understand a man’s work by what he has accomplished but by what he has overcome in accomplishing it.

Whatever be the challenges, whatever be the obstacles before us, I say to you as I say to everybody else that we will overcome.

I've been through a lot of ups and downs. But in the process, I won two heavyweight titles. Not many men can say that.

I had no money, no training facilities, no snow, no ski jumps, no trainer, but I still managed to ski jump for my country - and getting there was my gold medal.

Not many people get up after a setback or two. But those who do make the impossible come true.

I believe I overcame a lot.

I feel like, sometimes, when things are just handed to people, in a way, right away, you don't get a sense of what the rejection and the struggle is like that comes along with life.

It's not what you accomplish in life that matters; it's what you overcome.

I haven’t come from the typical path or background of someone who would make it to this level as a ballerina. When it came to my childhood-growing up in a single-parent home, often struggling financially-my mother definitely instilled in me and my siblings this strength, this will, to just continue to survive and succeed.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

The thrill of achievement comes from overcoming adversity in the accomplishment of an important goal.

Man has become great through struggle