Quotes About Conscience

The times we did, I would be hit by a sense of what I can only call pre-guilt: the expectation that she was going to say or do something that would make me feel properly guilty.

He did not want to make himself into a dramatic character. But sometimes, as his mind skittered in the small hours, he thought: so this is what history has come to. All that striving and idealism and hope and progress and science and art and conscience, and it all ends like this, with a man standing by a lift, at his feet a small case containing cigarettes, underwear and tooth powder; standing there and waiting to be taken away.

Dad was not a religious man, and he once said to me that he didn't think he would believe in God at all were it not for the existence of two things: trees — and man's conscience. He said that without trees, we would not survive on this planet, for they feed us, clothe us, shelter us, make oxygen. Without a conscience, man would probably never have developed beyond a primitive state.

Abhor that which is evil; Cleave to that which is good.

I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.

Sometimes responsibility sneaked up on you without your seeing it coming, and then, very suddenly, it wouldn't let you go anymore.

Zwei Dinge erfüllen das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je öfter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschäftigt: der gestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir.

There is a unique pleasure in obedience. The answer of a good conscience brings into the heart a peace and satisfaction that nothing can destroy.

Social justice remained crucial to their piety, as Louis Massignon, the late French scholar, has explained: The mystic call is as a rule the result of an inner rebellion of the conscience against social injustices, not only those of others but primarily and particularly against one's own faults with a desire intensified by inner purification to find God at any price.

It was an ethical choice between rules or lives, and rules didn't always translate into what was right.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

A man does not necessarily sin who does that which our reason and our conscience condemn.

Remorse of conscience is like an old wound; a man is in no condition to fight under such circumstances. The pain abates his vigor and takes up too much of his attention.

Conscience in most men, is but the anticipation of the opinions of others.

I wonder if it's ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens? D'ya suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime? I'm not much on rear window ethics.

Evil into the mind of god or man may come and go, so unapproved, and leave no spot or blame behind.

Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

There is no man that is knowingly wicked but is guilty to himself; and there is no man that carries guilt about him but he receives a sting in his soul.

Man, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin, Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within.

Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.

A man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.

Conscience, man's moral medicine chest.

That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.

Poverty is a scorpion; it stings the poor and it also stings the men with high conscience who feel sad about the poverty; the rest is immune to it!