To Kill a Mockingbird Key Themes and Quotes

Prejudice
1. "Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks"
2. "Why, one sprig of nut-grass can ruin a whole yard."
3. "Inside...was a white, waxy, perfect camellia."
4. "It won't be many years, Jean Louise, before you become interested in clothes and boys"
5. "a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak."
6. "evidently taking delight in corrupting a child"
7. "In our courts all men are created equal"
8. "Hypocrites, Mrs Perkins, born hypocrites....At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders"
9. "Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody."
10. 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, he is trash.”
Education
1. you tell him ill try and take over from here and try to undo the damage"
2. Calpurnia, the black maid. is the person who taught Scout how to read
3. we don't write in the first grade we print
4. your father doesn't know how to teach
5. shows education system is rigid and therefore ill fitting for some children.
6. Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts
7. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”(
Good Parenting
1. "Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny"
2. "Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets."
3. "if I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in the town"
4. "If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him."
Bad Parenting
1. "Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c'n make me do nothin'!"
2. "His curtness stung me."
3. "a little bantam cock of a man"
4. "like the playhouse of an insane child"
5. "You goddamn whore, I'll kill ya"
Empathy and Understanding
1. "You never really understand a person... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
2. "Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for her actions."
3. "That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me."
4. "Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in"
5. "It's like bein' a caterpillar in a cocoon"
6. "it's because he wants to stay inside"
7. "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
8. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."
9. 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.”
10. “I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
11. 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.”
Innocence and its Removal
1. "did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?"
2. "Children...can spot an evasion quicker than adults"
3. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
4. "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way."
5. "You haven't even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse."
6. "Because you're children and you can understand it"
7. "and his shoulders jerked as if each 'guilty' was a separate stab between them"
8. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds"
9. "Will you take me home?"
10. “They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.”
11. “I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”
12. “I'm little but I'm old.”
Courage
1. "do I show it?"
2. “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.
3. "I wanted you to see what real courage is....According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew."
4. Broke the last remaining code of childhood
5. fight the fight if the battles right otherwise if you don't you comply with it
6. “Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
  1. "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win"
7. “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.”
Racism
1. "it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover"
2. "Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays."
3. "She owned a bright green square Brick and a black chauffeur, both kept in an unhealthy state of tidiness"
4. "You know what we want. Get aside from the door, Mr Finch."
5. "just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere"
6. "I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!"
7. "Jedge, I've asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder."
8. "Mr Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too."
9. "You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?"
10. "Cry about the hell white people give coloured folk, without even stopping to think that they're people, too."
11. "that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings..."
Justice
1. Let the dead bury the dead this time
2. if you were a nigger like me you would be worried to
3. if a man like atticus finch wants to butt his head aganst a stone wall its his head
4. Maycomb county courthouse) is a view indicating a people determined to preserve ever physical scrap of the past
5. We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.”

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To Kill a Mockingbird Key Themes and Quotes

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