Quotes About Conscience

Once, he reminded himself, I studied hard to learn to save lives. Now I must educate myself in how to take one.

You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it's the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.

For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.

Now, I appeal to the consciences of those who persecute, wound, torture, and kill other men on the excuse of 'religion', whether they do this in a spirit of friendship and kindness.

man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power, unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him.

govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason which God had implanted in him.

And although it hurts when people think less well of us than we deserve, our integrity, our self-respect, and our happiness do not ultimately depend upon the opinion of others. They depend upon our own conscience. We must be true to ourselves. And we must be true to others, whether they believe we are or not.

Be honorable, wherever you are, Bart. Do the right thing instead of the easy thing.

Did two good people do something they knew was wrong because there was some kind of magical chemistry involved? Or was it plain old human fallibility, weakness in the face of temptation?

isn't religious but she does have an immutable sense of right and wrong and

Giving a damn and doing what is right are rewards in themselves.

I don't want what you want," I said. "And I'm not going to help you. I don't even want to argue with you, because while I know that human beings are capable of assimilating, adopting, internalizing, integrating, and identifying with new sets of ideas—because we have, multiple times in the history of the species—I've discovered that I don't actually care what you think, because you are an awful person and you want awful things.

Wainwright looks like she knows what she's doing is wrong, and it'll never be right inside her head again.

It was a morally complex equation.

Consciences are the sort of thing that don't seem really desirable to have, unless you're currently using yours.

You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word.

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Was honour the same as conscience? If not, how did one choose between them? And was the choice, when made, bitter as gall?

Money, influence, and human imperatives always spoke more loudly than conscience and God.

Right and wrong, I learned that day, could not really be taught after all, only felt.

Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious. But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having

I felt terrible, I have always been frightened of doing something wrong, of being inconsiderate; it is a real fear I have.

Origen's Platonized theology marks the birth of the Christian humanitarian conscience.