To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes
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Source: To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried."
"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they 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. […]
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."
Context
According to Atticus Finch, there's just something about race that makes white people crazy.
He's talking to Jem here and holding up Jem as an exception because of his youth. That makes it seem like whatever that "something" is, it's learned and not innate. In case it wasn't already obvious from the trial going on, he also mentions that law isn't free of the prejudices that plague everyday life—it's subject to the same problems as society at large.
Usually in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is a voice of hope for change, but here, he flatly says that racism is a "fact of life," suggesting that losing Tom's case severely dented his optimism concerning human nature. Or maybe he just thinks that, having sat through the case, Jem is ready to hear a truer, grimmer version of how the world works.
Where you've heard it
Did you listen to Serial?
There's no question that people still aren't happy with how the justice system works.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Oh, Atticus. We love you too much to call you pretentious.