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Quotes About Discrimination

I was scared, suh. - Why were you scared? - Mr Finch if you was a nigger like me you'd be scared, too.
~ Harper Lee
There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads--they couldn't be fair if they tried.
~ Harper Lee
Jean Louise, when I said that I wasn't referring to us." "Who were you talking about, then?" "I was talking about the—you know, the trashy people. The men who keep Negro women and that kind of thing.
~ Harper Lee
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand
~ Harper Lee
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.
~ Harper Lee
Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked.
~ Harper Lee
She wished she had paid more attention to them, but only one glance down a column of print was enough to tell her a familiar story: same people who were the Invisible Empire, who hated Catholics; ignorant, fear-ridden, red-faced, boorish, law-abiding, one hundred per cent red-blooded Anglo-Saxons, her fellow Americans—trash.
~ Harper Lee
she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.
~ Harper Lee
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none
~ Harper Lee
real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you're too nasty to associate with people. How they're as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they're human.
~ Harper Lee
Naquela noite, quando saímos do tribunal, a srta. Gates estava descendo a escada na nossa frente [...] Ouvi quando ela disse que estava na hora de alguém dar uma lição neles, que estavam indo longe demais, daqui a pouco iam querer casar com os brancos. Jem, como uma pessoa pode detestar tanto Hitler e depois falar isso de alguém daqui mesmo?
~ Harper Lee
how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home-
~ Harper Lee
The older you grow the more of it you'll see. 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. As
~ Harper Lee
These top-water nigger preachers . . . like apes . . . mouths like Number 2 cans . . . twist the Gospel . . . the court prefers to listen to Communists . . . take 'em all out and shoot 'em for treason . . . Against
~ Harper Lee
I ain't never seen any jury decide in favor of a coloured man over a white man..
~ Harper Lee
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, that white man is trash.
~ Harper Lee
be', il vecchio Adolf Hitler ha dato addosso agli ebrei, li ha messi in prigione, gli ha portato via tutto e non li ha lasciati uscire dal paese, e poi ha lavato tutti i deboli di nente... Lavato i deboli di mente?... Sissignora, penso che fosse perché non capivano di doversi lavare, forse un debole di mente non sa tenersi pulito.
~ Harper Lee
A medida que crezcas, verás a los blancos estafando a los negros, todos los días de tu vida, pero te diré una cosa, y no la olvides: siempre que un hombre blanco abusa de un negro, no importa quién sea, ni cuán rico sea, ni cuán distinguida haya sido la familia de que procede, ese hombre blanco es basura.
~ Harper Lee
L'unica superiorità che l'ometto sul banco dei testimoni poteva vantare sui propri vicini di casa consisteva nel fatto che, a strofinarlo con la liscivia e acqua molto calda, si sarebbe scoperto che la sua pelle era bianca.
~ Harper Lee
He looked all Negro to me: he was rich chocolate with flaring nostrils and beautiful teeth. Sometimes he would skip happily , and the Negro woman tugged his hand to make him stop.
~ Harper Lee
But Cal, Jem protested, you don't look even near as old as Atticus. Colored folks don't show their ages so fast, she said.
~ Harper Lee
All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.
~ Harper Lee
Cry about the simple hell people give other people - without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think they're people, too
~ Harper Lee
Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with. (Lee 119)
~ Harper Lee