Atticus Finch

"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."

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

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

"Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself."

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

"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, that white man is trash."

"I'm simply defending a Negro man."

"The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town."

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

"People are not, in the end, always ugly; you have to believe they can be better than they are."

"Some Negroes lie, some are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted with anything—but this is true of the people in this town too."

"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."

"Someday, maybe, it will be of some avail."

"The fact, as I understand it, the fact that may be the least understood fact of all."

"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the American judicial system."

"You are a very peculiar child, Scout."

"People have a way of carrying their resentments into a jury box."

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

"Do the best you can with the lot you've been given."

"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads."

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

"Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with all sensible children."

"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."

"Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway."

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

"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life."

"Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look straight back."

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

"I'm simply defending a Negro."

"The simple hell of it is, we've forgotten how to talk to each other."