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.

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”

“Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances."
Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?”

“All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.”

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)”

Of course this is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

“The oddest thing is that they all go against the lessons that grown-ups teach children. Don’t hurt anyone. Solve your problems with language instead of fists. Share your things. Don’t take something that belongs to someone else without asking. Use your manners. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Why do mothers and fathers bother spending so much time teaching children these lessons when grown-ups don’t pay any attention to the words themselves?” – “In the shadow of blackbirds”

"Why can’t a girl be smart without it being explained away as a rare supernatural phenomenon?”

“You said it wasn’t your fault for being born rich any more than it was my fault for being born poor. And you’re right. But if we don’t do anything to fix the world, if we just shrug and let children starve and soldiers die and people be treated like cattle . . . if we don’t fix the world, Miss Kutepova, I believe it becomes our fault.”

"The road ahead may be rather upsetting for a sixteen-year-old girl. I'm afraid your delicate female eyes and ears will experience some ugliness."

"Oh, you silly, naive men." I shook my weary head and genuinely pitied their ignorance. "You've clearly never been a sixteen-year-old girl in the fall of 1918."

“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 see it through no matter what.
- Atticus Finch ” — Harper Lee