Quotes from Reginald Rose

It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even if you believe in something very strongly.

Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.

It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.

There were eleven votes for "guilty." It's not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.

This is a quiet, frightened, insignificant old man who has been nothing all his life, who has never had recognition, his name in the newspapers. Nobody knows him, nobody quotes him, nobody seeks his advice after seventy-five years. That's a very sad thing, to be nothing. A man like this needs to be recognized, to be listened to, to be quoted just once. This is very important. It would be so hard for him to recede into the background ...

Look, this boy's been kicked around all his life. You know-living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That's not a very good head start. He's had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That's all.

Well, it's not easy to stand alone against the ridicule of others. He gambled for support and I gave it to him.

What a terrible thing for a man to believe! Since when is dishonesty a group characteristic? You have no monopoly on the truth.

8th Juror: Did you ever see a woman who had to wear glasses and didn't want to because she thinks they spoil her looks? 6th Juror: My wife. Listen, I'm telling ya, as soon as we walk outa the house... 8th Juror: Maybe the district attorney didn't know either. 6th Juror: Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. 3rd Juror: Ok. She had marks on her nose. I'm givin' ya that. From glasses. Right? She never worn 'em out of the house so people think'd she was gorgeous.