Excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

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 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.

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. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, 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.

—-Atticus Finch

Excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee

:: Harper Lee

When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face
that always made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?”
he asked.

“Bending the law?”

“No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this
way,” he said. “If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll
go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?”

“Yes sir!”

“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,”  Atticus
said, when he saw me preparing to spit.

As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, “By the way,
Scout, you’d better not say anything at school about our agreement.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable
disapprobation by the more learned authorities.”

Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s last-will-and-testament
diction, and we were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a
translation when it was beyond our understanding.

“Huh, sir?”

“I never went to school,” he said, “but I have a feeling that if
you tell Miss Caroline we read every night she’ll get after me, and I
wouldn’t want her after me.”