“The conscience is a dilemma for the believer in evolution. He doesn't know why it exists. Neither do the experts. Why would evolution create something that tells us that it's wrong to lie, to steal, to kill, and to commit adultery? Was primitive man committing these sins before he evolved a conscience? If he wasn't, why didn't his conscience evolve? If he was, why did the conscience evolve?”

“If you can see a problem, and you have the ability to fix it, it becomes your responsibility. It’s always been that way.”
Source: The Tejano Conflict (2014), Chapter 27

Filling Up the Hump (1993)

The Registrar
All the Names (1997)

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 14, p. 54

TV appearances

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Context: Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Context: To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

"Help", speech to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (3 March 2007), in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 111
Context: [Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.

Hymn

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)