When your intelligence don't tell you something ain't right, your conscience gives you a tap you on the shoulder and says 'Hold on'. If it don't, you're a snake.

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.

President Johnson rightly praised the courage of the Negro for awakening the conscience of the nation.

After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action.