Quotes About Conscience

In the old days conscience was very important. If someone tried living without one, it was obvious right away, everyone lived an open life then. There were all kinds of people then, too. Some would have been happy to follow their conscience, but what do you do if you're born without one? You can't buy it with money.

In the old days, you could see it: whether a person had it or not. Those who had it were conscientious, those without it were conscienceless. And now only the devil can tell, everything is mixed up in one pile. They bring it up needlessly with every word, mauling the poor thing so much it's barely alive.

One need not fear the devil, but rather the perverse tendencies in oneself!

A heart needs only its own voice to do what is right.

There is direct correlation between a society lacking in artistic vision to lack of social conscience, i.e., crime, poverty, and senseless, violent atrocities, materialism.

wasn't going to try and get the foreman's job, even though it gave you a chance of staying alive, for the worst thing in the camps was forcing another person, a prisoner like yourself, to bow to your will (or anyone else's). What did it matter that I knew that Ivanov was a swine, that Petrov was a spy and Zaslavsky a false witness?

And the greatest tragedy of our age is we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another.

In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.

There are those who are so scrupulously afraid of doing wrong that they seldom venture to do anything.

It is quite impossible to understand,' I commented afterwards, 'how we can be such strong individualists, so insistent on the rights and claims of every human soul, and yet at the same time countenance (and if we are English, even take quite calmly) this wholesale murder, which if it were applied to animals or birds or indeed anything except men would fill us with a sickness and repulsion greater than we could endure.

Le succès est peu de choses, auprès d'une conscience en repos.

Human reason can excuse any evil.

I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did. I don't.

When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.

Conscience is God present in man.

You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.

The man who tells you nothing frightens him is whistling in the dark. Besides, fear is not necessarily bad. It may guard you from harm. And I suspect that fear of being caught, punished and disgraced keeps many more of us from committing crimes than does the voice of conscience'.

We are the spirit, the collective conscience. We create the pain, and suffering, and beauty in this world.

perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old, old craving for beauty.

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.

You can't regulate a soul into a business.

Though inclination be as sharp as will, My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect.