Top 100+ To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.
Scout” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“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. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
– Atticus Finch” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“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, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“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 sin to kill a mockingbird.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ’em get your goat. Try fightin’ with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time. It’s because he wants to stay inside.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Things are always better in the morning.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Pass the damn ham, please.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“There are just some kind of men who-who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s not time to worry yet” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again and when they do it — seems that only the children weep. Good night.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe- some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.
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.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike — in the second place, folks don’t like to have someone around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Things are never as bad as they seem.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Summer, and he watches his children’s heart break. Autumn again and Boo’s children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. “Scout,” he said, “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”

Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.”

Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“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.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Hey Boo.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Try fighting with your head for a change…
it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”

“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”

“The way you tell it, it is.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,’ said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
Yes sir, a clown,’ he said. ‘There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.’
You got it backwards, Dill,’ said Jem. ‘Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.’
Well I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“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 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, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I don’t want to hear any words like that while I’m here. Scout, you’ll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?’

I said not particularly.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Daylight…In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas.
It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yeard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.
It was fall and his children fought ont he sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woe’s and triymph’s on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive.
Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog.
Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break.
Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I’m little but I’m old.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women – black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Dill?”
Mm?”
Why do you reckon Boo Radleys never run off?”
Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.
Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—”

“Sir?”

“—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“No, everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin’. That Walter’s as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus—” …said Jem bleakly. “How could they do it, how could they?”
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before & they did it tonight & they’ll do it again & when they do it— seems that only children weep.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I’m Charles Baker Harris…I can read” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I was not so sure, but 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.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“We’re the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie. “We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Finders were keepers unless title was proven.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I wanted you to see something about her – 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. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He’s asleep…” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“When stalking one’s prey, it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry…” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I didn’t know how you were going to do it, but from now on I’ll never worry about what’ll become of you, son, you’ll always have an idea.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin’ I can do it.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know–doesn’t say much for them, does it?” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flied in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by night fall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, noting to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Fino al giorno in cui mi minacciarono di non lasciarmi più leggere, non seppi di amare la lettura: si ama, forse, il proprio respiro?” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.. if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches, when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to do things that required pants. Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat;it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike- in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You damn morphodite, I’ll kill you!” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“He jerked his head at Dill: ‘Things haven’t caught up with that one’s instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being- not quite right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him.’
‘Cry about what, Mr. Raymond?’ Dill’s maleness was beginning to assert itself.
‘Cry about the simple hell people give each other- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.
A reflection on the innocence and vulnerability of children” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“Let the dead bury the dead.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“When they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things . . . Atticus, he was real nice. . . .” His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ’em get your goat.Try fighting with your head for a change . . .it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird