Atticus Being A Mockingbird Quotes

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

There are just some kind of men…who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one.

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of another... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

Atticus, he was real nice." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.

It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court.

Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.

This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.

There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em. No... you had the right answer this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn’t.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.