أيها السادة لن اطيل عليكم و لكني أريد استعمال ما تبقى لي من وقت لديكم لاذكركم بأن هذه الدعوى ليست بالدعوى الصعبة و لا تحتاج إلى تمحيص وقائع معقدة و لكنها تتطلب منكم أن تكونوا واثقين دون أي شك يقبله العقل بأن المتهم مذنب أولًا هذه الدعوى ما كان يجب أن تطرح أساسًا على المحكمة هذه القضية بسيطة و واضحة وضوح الفرق بين الأبيض و الأسود ..
الأمر بسيط جدًا . بعض الناس لا يتظاهرون ... كما أفعل أنا . و الآن أستطيع أن أقول فليذهبوا إلى الجحيم . لا يهمنسي سواء أحبوا ذلك أم كرهوه ، و أنا اقول أني لا أكترث إذا لم يعجبهم الأمر ، هذا حق بما فيه الكفاية .. و لكني لا أقول فليذهبوا إلى الجحيم ، هل فهمتما ما أعني ؟أحاول أن أمنحهم سببًا ، أتريان معي الآن ؟ إن ذلك يساعد الناس على إيجاد سبب إذا لم يستطيعوا إيحادة . حين أنزل إلى البلدة ، و هو أمر نادر ، فإني لو تمايلت قليلًا و شربت من هذا الكيس ، سيقول الناس دولفوس رايموند واقع تحت سيطرة الويسكي ... و لذا لن يغير أساليبه ، إنه لا يستطيع مغالبة نفسه ، و لذا يعيش هذا النوع من الحياة ..ليس من الأمانة في شيء ، و لكنه يساعد الناس كثيرًا ، بيني و بينك يا آنسة فينش ، لست ذلك السكير ، و لكنك ترين أنهم لن يقدروا أبدًا أن يفهموا أني أعيش بهذه الطريقة لأن تلك هي الطريقة التي أريدها
One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that 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 cake than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.But there is one way in this country which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man equal of an Einstein, and an ignorant man equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human constitution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.
Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment. Routine contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. (...) Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.
I can’t say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he’s my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end. Her voice rose: It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I’ve seen him when—what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else? What does who want, Alexandra? Miss Maudie asked. I mean this town. They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they’re too afraid to do themselves—it might lose ’em a nickel. They’re perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to do, they’re— Be quiet, they’ll hear you, said Miss Maudie. Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple. Who? Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew. The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord’s kindness am I. Miss Maudie’s old crispness was returning: The handful of people in this town with background, that’s who they are. Had
couldn’t be fair if they tried. 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. Doesn’t make it right, said Jem stolidly. He beat his fist softly on his knee. You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that—you can’t. You couldn’t, but they could and did.
You like words like damn and hell now, don’t you? I said I reckoned so. Well I don’t, said Uncle Jack, not unless there’s extreme provocation connected with ’em. I’ll be here a week, and 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.
How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial. Senseless killing--Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.
Scout," said Atticus, "When summer comes you'll you'll have to keep your head about far worse things....it's not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down - well, all I can say is when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience - Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man." "Atticus, you must be wrong...." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think that, they're right and you're wrong...." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their options," 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.
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.
His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.
When Atticus came home to dinner he found me crouched down aiming across the street. What are you shooting at? Miss Maudie’s rear end. Atticus turned and saw my generous target bending over her bushes. He pushed his hat to the back of his head and crossed the street. Maudie, he called, I thought I’d better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.
To all parties present and participating in the life of the country, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn. She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that amused Jem rather than annoyed him: Aunty better watch how she talks—scratch most folks in Maycomb and they’re kin to us.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.
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.
Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I looked up, and his face was vehement. There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who’ll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance. Don’t fool yourselves—it’s all adding up and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it. I hope it’s not in you children’s time.
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. It aggravates ’em. You’re 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. Cal,