Quotes About Conscience

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence the more often and more steadily one reflects on them, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law.

I express the principle of one's freedom as a human being in this formula: No one can compel me (in accordance with his beliefs about the welfare of others) to be happy after his fashion.

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

We] believe, or assume to believe, that [we] satisfy [our] duty to [humanity] if [we] first provide fully for [our] own material wants and then pay [our] tribute to the universal provider by giving a little to the poor. But if [we] were scrupulously just there would be no poor to whom we could give alms and think that we had realized the merit of benevolence. Better than charity, better than giving of our surplus is conscientious and scrupulously fair conduct and a helping hand in need.

There can be only one reason why we must do what duty demands, and that is that we demand it of ourselves.

T]he sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favor it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity.

I express the principle of one's freedom as a human being in this formula: No one can compel me (in accordance with his beliefs about the welfare of others) to be happy after his own fashion.

A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition - that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favor of any inclination, nay, even of the sum-total of all inclinations... like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself.

Conscience is an instinct to pass judgment upon ourselves in accordance with moral laws.

starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Het is geheel en al onmogelijk om in de wereld en zelfs ook daarbuiten iets te bedenken wat zonder restrictie voor goed gehouden kan worden, behalve dan een GOEDE WIL.

Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences!

Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves.

There are moments when, if one rejects the simple and obvious promptings of duty, one finds oneself in a labyrinth of complexities of some quite new kind.

He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him.

I felt at times, it is hard to describe this, almost mad with guilt, with a sort of general guilt about my whole life.

Extreme continuing unhappiness often consoles itself with images of death which may in a sense be idle, but which can play a vital part in consolation and also in the continuance of illusion. If that happens I am dead, consoles, and also dulls the edge of speculation and even of conscience. It is another way of saying, to me that cannot happen.

But thinking about wickedness usually just comforts.

To be good is just never to lose it. How does evil begin in a life? How can it begin? Yet we were there once.

There may be no God, but there's decency and - and there's truth and trying to stay there, I mean to stay in it, in its sort of light, and trying to do a good thing and to hold onto what you know to be a good thing even if it seems stupid when you come to do it.

A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one.

His eyes wir crystal clear and treacherous, untainted by conscience or compassion.

He was a victim of his own integrity, which forced him to do his best, even when he would have preferred to do nothing at all.