12 Angry Men (1957)

Juror #3: Look, you voted guilty. What side are you on?
Juror #11: I don't believe I have to be loyal to one side or the other. I'm simply asking questions.

---

Juror #10: All right, who was it? I wanna know.
Juror #11: Excuse me, this was a secret ballot. We all agreed on that. Now if the gentleman wants it to remain secret...
Juror #3: Secret? What do you mean secret? There are no secrets in a jury room, I know who it was.
[to Juror #5]
Juror #3: Brother, you really are something, you sit here vote guilty like the rest of us, then some golden-voiced preacher starts tearing your poor heart out about some underprivileged kid, just couldn't help becoming a murderer, and you change your vote. Well if that isn't the most sickening... Why don't you drop a quarter in his collection box!
Juror #5: Oh now just wait a minute, listen, you can't talk to me that, who do you think you are?
Juror #4: Now calm down, calm down!
Juror #5: No, now who do you think you are?
Juror #4: It doesn't matter, he's very excitable, just sit down.
Juror #3: Excitable! You bet I'm excitable. We are trying to put a guilty man in the chair where he belongs, and then someone starts telling us fairytales and we're listening!
Juror #1: Heya, c'mon now.
Juror #3: [to Juror #5] What made you change your vote?
Juror #9: He didn't change his vote. I did!
Juror #10: Ohhh fine.
Juror #9: Would you like me to tell ya why?
Juror #7: No I wouldn't like you to tell me why...
Juror #9: Well I'd like to make it clear anyways, if you don't mind.
Juror #10: Do we have to listen to this?
Juror #6: The man wants to talk.
Juror #9: Thank you.
[motions to Juror #8]
Juror #9: This gentleman has been standing alone against us. Now he doesn't say that the boy is not guilty, he just isn't sure. Well it's not easy to stand alone against the ridicule of others, so he gambled for support and I gave it to him. I respect his motives. The boy is probably guilty, but - eh, I want to hear more. Right now the vote is ten to two. [Juror #7 gets up and heads to the bathroom]
Juror #9: Now I'm talking here, you have no right to leave this room... Juror #8: He can't hear you, and he never will. Let's sit down.

---

Juror #8: It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don't really know what the truth is. I don't suppose anybody will ever really know. 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 let a guilty man go free, I don't know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that's something that's very valuable in 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.

---

read more quotes from 12 Angry Men...

In 12 Angry Men Lee J. Cobb's character was played by George C. Scott. Making it the second time Scott followed Cobb in portraying the same character. He did it previously, playing the character of "Lt. Kinderman" in The Exorcist III, the same character Cobb played in the original film The Exorcist.
The movie is commonly used in business schools and workshops to illustrate team dynamics and conflict resolution techniques.
Henry Fonda immediately complained to Sidney Lumet about the cheap backdrops outside the jury room windows when he walked on set. "They look like shit. Hitch had great backdrops, you could walk right in them," said Fonda, referring to the previous film he made with Alfred Hitchcock, The Wrong Man. Lumet assured him that the director of photography Boris Kaufman had a plan to make them work.
read more facts about 12 Angry Men...