Quotes About Conscience

Conscience was chiefly fear of society, or fear of oneself.

Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within.

Don't be on the side of the angels, it's too lowering.

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.

Having OCD, and tending to see things as either black or white and in perfectionistic terms, as well as being overconscientious, he was extremely hard on himself and insisted that he somehow be guaranteed that he would not one day snap and act on his thoughts. At one point, Frank told me that he was now concerned that he was feeling too little anxiety, which made him think that perhaps he was a sociopath without a conscience after all and would end up like Jeffrey Dahmer!

Jayda, you know what that sounds like to me? A desperate rationalization to soothe a guilty conscience." "Your opinion is meaningless, Detective. Adultery isn't a crime and telling his wife about our purely carnal relationship now would only add to her pain.

The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

But there are times in this harum-scarum world when figuring out the right thing to do is quite simple, but doing the right thing is simply impossible....

Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will ever know why.

I will suddenly remember this thing I did, and think to myself, Was it really necessary? Was it absolutely necessary to steal that sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor?

It is one thing to think horrible thoughts, but it is another to behave atrociously, as you know. You can easily think of times when you were horrible, and when I say easily I mean it is very easy to remember these times and hard to stop remembering. They ache in the brain and the body, these shameful memories, like a broken bone that has never quite healed right.

if you don't choose the wicked thing what in the world will you do?

As far as I could tell, people didn't do things because they were good or evil. They did things because they could not think of what else to do

Yes, of course. A matter of principle, was it? I've always said that matters of principle are the very last things that should provoke a man to seeking recourse in the law courts. The same might well be said of the recourse to violence.

O' sanity, o' sanity What am I to do with you? Drink up, shoot up, anything you please But she's always standing behind me like a devil in hell

A man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressure, and that is the basis of all human morality. And whatever maybe the sactifices he faces if he follows his conscience, the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men, each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless.

I was so anxious to do what is right that I forgot to do what is right.

The worst crimes; are the crimes of the heart