To Kill a Mockingbird: Important Quotes and Themes

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering key quotes, speakers, chapters, and thematic concepts from the notes.

 Atticus, Chapter 25, fate of tom

“Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed”

Atticus, Chapter 10, gun

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”

Jem, chapter 6, atticus integrity

“Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember. I wanta keep it that way.”

Atticus, Chapter 9, legislature

“The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this country in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or jem not to do something again.”

Atticus, Chapter 3, understanding

“You can't understand a person until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Miss gates, Chapter 26, money

“Well I don’t know for certain- they’re supposed to change money or somethin- but that ain’t no cause to persecute ‘em. They’re white ain’t they?”

Scout chapter 26, taught em a lesson

“I heard her say it's time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home?

Scout, Chapter 23, class

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks”

Jem, chapter 23, kinds of folks

“There are four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbours, there's the kind like the cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the ewells down at the dump, and the negroes”

 Jem and atticus, chapter 23, trial ending

‘Yessir, but the jury didn’t have to give him death - if they wanted to, they could’ve given him 20 years’ ‘Given,’ - said Atticus. ‘Tom Robinson’s a coloured man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world’s going to say, “We think you’re guilty, but not very,” on a charge like that. It was either straight acquittal or nothing.’

atticus, chapter 23, black vs white

“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.”

dolphus raymond, chapter 20, outside trial

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people—without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too.”