There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

The masses don't shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

The secret of life is to have no fear; it's the only way to function.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy.

Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we'd be hard put to distinguish them.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.

A man is born free.

No man can given anybody his freedom.

We are revolutionaries.

So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it's not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities.

The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then.

It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.

I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets.

Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath. We ain't running no more.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn't a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they're built upon racism.

One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.

The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.

We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.

I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people.

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan.

Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that.Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.

Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent.

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.

I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me.

There has been only a civil rights movement whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.

The secret of life is to have no fear; It's the only way to function.

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

I think that if there are positions that you can't argue... then the responsibility is probably to resign. If one's own conscience is opposed to the requirements and responsibilities of the job, then it's time to leave the job.

We cannot appeal to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep.

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures.

Maybe I'll learn how, but the only thing I can do is turn down parts that would hurt my conscience.

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.

It wouldn't sit easily on one's conscience that you had been warned and there could be danger, but nevertheless you went ahead and said let's dispense these drugs.

Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.