Quotes About Justice

We generally get the juries we deserve.

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

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. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty." Atticus's

Well, Dill, after all he's just a Negro." "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that—it just makes me sick." "That's

The only way in which all men in America are equal, is in the courtroom - Atticus

Sherlock Holmes and Jem Finch would agree.

I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things.

Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?" Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. "Thank you for my children, Arthur," he said.

Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

The law is what he lives by. He'll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he'll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government—just like you, child. You turned and tackled no less than your own tin god—but remember this, he'll always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law. That's the way he lives.

In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a Black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly but those are just the facts of life. - Atticus Finch

His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.

She printed DEMOCRACY in large letters. 'Democracy,' she said. 'Does anybody have a definition?' 'Us,' somebody said. I raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had once told me about. 'What do you think it means, Jean Louise?' '"Equal rights for all, special privileges for none!",' I quoted.

Atticus, are we going to win it?" "No, honey." "Then, why—" "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win," Atticus said.

rights for all, special privileges for none!",' I quoted.

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.

Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I looked up, and his face was vehement. "There's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves—it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time.

But 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 a court.

There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life." "Doesn't

I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody, not just Negroes.

Mr. Tate blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plain to him. Then he turned his head and looked around at Tom Robinson. As if by instinct, Tom Robinson raised his head. Something had been made plain to Atticus also, and it brought him to his feet. "Sheriff, please repeat what you said." "It was her right eye

A jury's vote's supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant." "Tom's

Matad todos los arrendajos azules que queráis, pero recordad que matar a un ruiseñor es pecado. (...) Los ruiseñores sólo se dedican a cantar para alegrarnos. No estropean los huertos, no anidan en los arcones del maíz, no hacen nada más que derramar su corazón, cantando para nuestro deleite. Por eso es pecado matar un ruiseñor.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, 'Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.