That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around - half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean - but people usually go by looks.
Interpretation
Judgment based on appearance often leads to misperceptions about a person's character.
This quote from S.E. Hinton highlights the tendency of society to judge individuals based on their outward appearance rather than their true character. It emphasizes the idea that people often stereotype others without knowing their true selves, showcasing the disparity in how different social groups are perceived. The narrator reflects on the fact that, despite their 'hood' image, many of the 'hoods' have good qualities, while some belonging to the more affluent 'Socs' may not be as kind as they seem.
In practice
In a discussion about social stereotypes, this quote can highlight the flaws in how we judge others.
Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.
Sometimes, I feel like I spent the first part of my life wishing to be a teen-age boy, and the second part condemned to being one.
Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.
Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.
I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.
...but I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience.
If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?
I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes.
Men go forth to marvel at the height of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.
It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.
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