12 Angry Men (1957) quotes

View Quote I don't feel I have to be loyal to one side or the other. I'm just asking questions.

View Quote It's not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first...We're talking about somebody's life here. We can't decide in five minutes. Supposin' we're wrong.

View Quote It's pretty tough to figure, isn't it? A kid kills his father. Bing! Just like that... It's the element... I'm telling ya, they let those kids run wild up there. Well, maybe it serves 'em right.

View Quote It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well, I don't think any real damage has been done here. Because I don't really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard which has enormous value to our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.

View Quote Oh, listen, I don't see what all this stuff about the knife has got to do with anything. Somebody saw the kid stab his Father, what more do we need? You guys can talk the ears right off my head you know what I mean? I got three garages of mine going to pot while you're talking! So let's get down and get out of here!

View Quote The kid's a dangerous killer, you could see it... He stabbed his own father, four inches into the chest. They proved it a dozen different ways in court, would you like me to list them for ya?

View Quote Well, I'm not used to supposin'. I'm just a workin' man. My boss does all the supposin' — but I'll try one. Supposin' you talk us all out of this and, uh, the kid really did knife his father?