To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes
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Source: To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
"First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
Context
We're in Chapter 3 of To Kill a Mockingbird here, and Atticus is already doling out the fatherly wisdom. In this case, he's trying to tell Scout that Miss Caroline (her teacher) was probably just trying to do her best in a new place, whose ways she doesn't yet understand.
Atticus's advice to "climb into someone's skin and walk around in it" is a little more Silence of the Lambs than the typical "walk a mile in someone's shoes," but the idea is the same: compassion is based on sympathy, on being able to put yourself in the other person's place and understand why they act the way they do even if you don't agree with it.
Where you've heard it
You'll probably here people tell you to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes," but climbing into their skin isn't quite as popular. Picture it in your head and you'll know why.
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.
We have a hard time caling fatherly advice pretentious. Unless you're not telling it to your kid...