Top 500 Harper Lee Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “It's better to be silent than to be a fool.”

— Harper Lee

3. “Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

— Harper Lee

4. “The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”

— Harper Lee

5. “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

— Harper Lee

6. “Things are never as bad as they seem.”

— Harper Lee

7. “Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

— Harper Lee

8. “The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”

— Harper Lee

9. “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

— Harper Lee

10. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

— Harper Lee

Featured in: Reading Quotes

11. “Things are always better in the morning.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

13. “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself. It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”

— Harper Lee

14. “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.”

— Harper Lee

Featured in: Quotes About Facts

15. “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. -Atticus Finch.”

— Harper Lee

16. “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

— Harper Lee

17. “As a reader I loathe introductions. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.”

— Harper Lee

18. “We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.”

— Harper Lee

19. “It’s not time to worry yet.”

— Harper Lee

20. “Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.”

— Harper Lee

21. “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

22. “Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”

— Harper Lee

23. “When you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go.”

— Harper Lee

24. “Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.”

— Harper Lee

25. “I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.”

— Harper Lee

Featured in: Book Quotes

26. “There’s no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There’s no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be.”

— Harper Lee

27. “You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.”

— Harper Lee

28. “You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

— Harper Lee

29. “Writing is something you’ll never learn in any university or at any school. It’s something that is within you, and if it isn’t there, nothing can put it there.”

— Harper Lee

Featured in: School Quotes

30. “Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”

— Harper Lee

31. “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, he is trash.”

— Harper Lee

32. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, 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

33. “Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

35. “I do my best to love everybody.”

— Harper Lee

36. “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

— Harper Lee

37. “Let the dead bury the dead.”

— Harper Lee

38. “It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”

— Harper Lee

39. “Love her, but leave her wild.”

— Harper Lee

40. “Pass the damn ham, please.”

— Harper Lee

41. “It’s not necessary to tell all you know.”

— Harper Lee

42. “You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.”

— Harper Lee

43. “Where are your pants, son?”

— Harper Lee

44. “I wanted you to see something about her – 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 you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

— Harper Lee

45. “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.”

— Harper Lee

46. “With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.”

— Harper Lee

47. “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.”

— Harper Lee

48. “This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.”

— Harper Lee

49. “Finders were keepers unless title was proven.”

— Harper Lee

50. “A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

— Harper Lee