Quotes About Conscience

Conscience and reputation are two things. Conscience is due to yourself, reputation to your neighbour.

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... 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.

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Nonviolent actions does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences. Nor does it have to petition those in power to do something about a situation. It can face the authorities with a new fact and say: Accept this new situation which we have created.

Conscience in the soul is the root of all true courage. If a man would be brave, let him learn to obey his conscience.

To me, the essence of keeping the soul nourished is obedience to one's conscience. I don't think that the soul can be nourished unless people have a strong sense of conscience that they have educated and developed and soaked in the universal and timeless principles of integrity and service. This way, the individual's soul becomes part of the universal soul of service, contribution, and making a difference.

You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.

Let Christians all understand that conscience is between themselves and God alone. They are not at liberty to impose even their freedom of conscience upon another; but by the laws of the kingdom of Christ, they are obliged even to refrain at times from exercising their own freedom, out of consideration for others.

The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom.

[Black nationalism] is not designed to make the black man reevaluate the white man--you know him already--but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don't change the white man's mind; you can't change his mind. And that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America--America's conscience is bankrupt.

[D]on't grow old. With age comes caution, which is another name for cowardice.... Whatever else you do in life, don't cultivate a conscience. Without a conscience a man may never be said to grow old. This is an age of very old young men.

If you don't have a conscience, what is your behavior like? Apparently, if you don't have a conscience, if you don't really . . . love, then the only thing that's left for you is the game - it's about controlling things.

There is indeed a certain sense of gratification when we do a good deed that gives us inward satisfaction, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience…These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail. “On Repentance

He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping. Therefore be sure you look to that, and in the next place look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to a good conscience.

Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don't have a conscience. I say them.

I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience... but for a criminal government.

I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.

Anyone of conscience could come look at my book and see it as an esoteric oddity or be intrigued by it. It could happen either way on a thousand different little decisions each individual might make.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.

Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart.

Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.

It became very important for me to stand up and design with a conscience for environment, you know? Just because you like clothes doesn't mean that you have to throw your principles out the window.

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.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is slicked o'er with the pale cast of thought

All duties are matters of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one.

Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

And so the blasts of calumny, howl they ever so fiercely over the good man's head, contribute to his juster appreciation and to his wider fame. Preserve only a good conscience toward God, and a loving purpose toward your fellow men, and you need not wince nor tremble, though the pack of the spaniel-hearted hounds snarl at your heels.

I still oppose "Visit Myanmar Year," and I would ask tourists to stay away. Burma is not going to run away. They should come back to Burma at a time when it is a democratic society where people are secure - where there is justice, where there is rule of law. They'll have a much better time. And they can travel around Burma with a clear conscience.

There are three things that earthly riches can never do; they can never satisfy divine justice, they can never pacify divine wrath, nor can they every quiet a guilty conscience. And till these things are done man is undone.

The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.

My activism has to do with my conscience; I cannot let certain things slide without doing something. My public speaking is part of an art form that is cultural.

Anxiety and conscience are a powerful pair of dynamos. Between them, they have ensured that I shall work hard, but they cannot ensure that one shall work at anything worthwhile.

If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.

Whoever attempts to suppress liberty of conscience finishes some day by wishing for the Inquisition.

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive.

Now for my own case, I bless the Lord that, for all that hath been said of me, my conscience doth not condemn me. I do not say I am free of sin, but I am at peace with God through a slain Mediator; and I believe that there is no salvation but only in Christ.

Very often people who live in a ghetto accept some of the stigmatisation against them. I mention the case of a Japanese minority the Burakumin, which was pure Japanese in descent, but which was concerned with dirty work: leather work, cadavers, and some other things.There was a famous story of an old man who asked: 'Do you yourself believe you are the same as the Japanese?' And the outsider said: 'I do not know, we are dirty.' This kind of conscience was never there in the surroundings in which I lived. One always felt as someone whom could be proud of, being both German and Jewish.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

The end of education is to see men made whole, both in competence and in conscience.

But no man has a monopoly of conscience.

Recognition of the Genocide is the triumph of human conscience and justice over intolerance and hatred.

Modern value-neutral society (Gesellschaft rather than Gemeinschaft) is systematized predation tempered not by conscience or values but rather merely by a system of law, which is no less corrupt with private interests and its own forms of predation. In modernity sophism is the order of the day, and this obliges its most adept practitioners to learn how to develop the art of appearing to be other than one actually is.