Quotes About Justice

Defense, hell! Atticus, we aren't on the Constitution now. I'm trying to make you see something. You now, you treat all people alike. I've never in my life seen you give that insolent, back-of-the-hand treatment half the white people down here give Negroes just when they're talking to them, just when they ask 'em to do something. There's no get-along-there-nigger in your voice when you talk to 'em.

You think about that,' Miss Maudie was saying. 'It was no accident. I was sittin' there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk and as I waited I thought. Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he'd the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step - it's just a baby-step, but it's a step.

her victim—of necessity she must put him away from her—he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.

cheatin' a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin' a white man

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

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

I remember that rape case you defended, but I missed the point. You love justice, all right. Abstract justice written down item by item on a brief—nothing to do with that black boy, you just like a neat brief. His cause interfered with your orderly mind, and you had to work order out of disorder. It's a compulsion with you, and now it's coming home to you—

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.

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 make it right," said Jem stolidly. He beat his fist softly on his knee. "You just can't convict a man on evidence like that—you can't." "You couldn't, but they could and did.

all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Your father is right, she said. Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sing to kill a mockingbird.

Dr. Finch looked up. "You're making a bad mistake if you think your daddy's dedicated to keeping the Negroes in their places.

Do you defend niggers, Atticus?' I asked him that evening. 'Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common.' ''s what everybody at schools says.' 'From now on it'll be everybody less one -' 'Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, wh ydo you send me to school?

Every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally.

The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defence for anybody.

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.

There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads--they couldn't be fair if they tried.

I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is.

The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am I.

I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

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.

But Mrs Dubose held us: 'Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the court-house lawing for niggers!

Thereafter, he [Bob Ewell] resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare office for his cheque, and received it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that the bastards who thought they ran this town wouldn't permit an honest man to make a living.