Want to find the best Atticus Finch quotes with page numbers?
I’ve included chapters and page numbers so you can read these Atticus and Scout quotes in context.
90 To Kill A Mockingbird quotes with page numbers
Atticus Finch Quotes With Page Numbers
“if you can learn a simple trick, you’ll get along a lot better with all kind of folks.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 3, Page 33
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 3, Page 33
“Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 3, Page 33
“You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father.”
I was shocked. “Atticus doesn’t drink whiskey,” I said. “He never drunk a drop in his life—nome, yes he did. He said he drank some one time and didn’t like it.”
Miss Maudie laughed. “Wasn’t talking about your father,” she said. “What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, About Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie and Scout Finch), Chapter 5, Page 51
“Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, About Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie), Chapter 5, Page 51
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 8, Page 76
“‘s what everybody at school says.”
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one–”
“Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin’ that way, why do you send me to school?”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Characters: Scout Finch and Atticus Finch), Chapter 9, Page 85
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 9, Page 87
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 9, Page 87
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 9, Page 99
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 10, Page 103
“You’re lucky, you know. You and Jem have the benefit of your father’s age. If your father was thirty you’d find life quite different.”
“I sure would. Atticus can’t do anything…”
“You’d be surprised,” said Miss Maudie. “There’s life in him yet.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie and Scout Finch), Chapter 10, Page 104
“If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his heart. Marksmanship’s a gift of God, a talent – oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin’s different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn’t shoot till he had to, and he had to today.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie), Chapter 10, Page 112
“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.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 115
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 120
“I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 120
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 120
“We can’t always have our ‘druthers.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 121
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 124
“Did she die free?” asked Jem.
“As the mountain air,” said Atticus.
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Characters: Jem Finch and Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 127
“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.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 128
“in favor of southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 15, Page 167
“That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 16, Page 179
“To begin with, this case should never have come to trial…’The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place… It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten – savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses… his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say “guilt,” gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She’s committed no crime – she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption… the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people’s! The defendant is not guilty – but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system – that’s no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe… Tom Robinson”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 20, Pages 230-31
“Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (…). There is a tendency (…) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. 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 most men.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 20, Page 233
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 20, Page 233
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 22, Page 243
“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, about Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie), Chapter 22, Pages 246
“Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie), Chapter 22, Pages 246
“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’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, about Atticus Finch (Character: Miss Maudie), Chapter 22, Pages 246
“The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 23, Page 249
“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.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 23, Page 252
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 23, Page 252
“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 30, Page 314
Jem Finch Quotes With Page Numbers
“Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 31, Page 323
Atticus Finch’s character description
Atticus Finch, the iconic character from Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is a well-rounded figure and a beacon of morality and fairness.
He’s portrayed as a wise, compassionate, rational lawyer, a loving father, and a role model of integrity. He is also very patient, as well as an articulate speaker.
His most notable qualities are his kindness, courage, and unwavering commitment to doing what is right. He firmly believes that the law should be applied fairly and that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity.
His character embodies wisdom and integrity amidst societal norms that foster prejudice and offer crucial life lessons.
The most famous advice from Atticus Finch centers around empathy and understanding: “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.”
This advice to his children illustrates his belief in the power of empathy and understanding to bridge differences and biases.
Atticus preaches the importance of integrity and staying true to oneself, showcasing it through his actions. As Miss Maudie attests, “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”
Atticus Finch is a paradigm of law and justice. However, he also asserts, “Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.” This showcases his understanding that justice isn’t black and white and that fairness sometimes requires us to reassess hard and fast rules.
Atticus’s wisdom extends to parenting and education as well. He values honesty and direct communication, even with children.
His belief is evident in his words to Scout: “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.”
Atticus understands the essence of courage and determination and instills them in his children. He states, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”
He teaches that courage isn’t about the certainty of winning but about standing up for what one believes in despite the odds.
He possesses a deep sense of justice and fairness, showcased when he discourages his children from killing mockingbirds. The mockingbird symbolizes innocence and beauty, and Atticus teaches his children that causing harm to those who are innocent is morally wrong.
He respects individuality and diversity, showcased by his defense of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape. Despite the societal norms of his day, Atticus stands firm in his belief in equality and challenges racism.
Additionally, Atticus values peace and encourages his children to resolve conflicts non-violently. He advises Scout: “Try fighting with your head for a change…it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.”
This advice encourages intellectual over physical conflict resolution.
Besides teaching his children to engage empathetically and intelligently with the world, Atticus also has a sense of humor. His humorous remark about him drinking whiskey captures his light-hearted character, an additional testament to his multi-faceted personality.
Despite seeming mild and unremarkable in his children’s eyes, Miss Maudie delivers an interesting perspective on Atticus, asserting, “If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his heart. Marksmanship’s a gift of God, a talent – oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin’s different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things.”
This quote illustrates that Atticus possesses talents beyond what his children realize.
Through his thoughts, actions, and quotes throughout “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch embodies the values of empathy, integrity, courage, patience, and fair play.
His character is a moral compass guiding his children and readers in the novel.
What is Atticus’s famous quote?
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 10, Page 103
What quotes show Atticus is compassionate?
“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, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 3, Page 33
What is an inspiring quote by Atticus?
“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.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (Character: Atticus Finch), Chapter 11, Page 128
Further Reading: