Quotes About Conscience

Who's the truth good for anyway but the guilty?

Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know.... That would be the worst crime of all.

You have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters. Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know." She released him now from her grip. "That would be the worst crime of all.

If Dr. Allenby thought she had any concept of what guilt was, then she was fooling herself. Guilt was what kept you awake in the middle of the night or, if you managed to sleep, poisoned your dreams. Guilt intruded upon any happy moment, whispering in your ear that you had no right to pleasure. Guilt followed you down streets, interrupting the most mundane moments with remembrances of days and hours when you could have done something to prevent tragedy but chose to do nothing.

That was guilt.

Their "strange Divinity" results from their lacking any sense of right or wrong, good or bad.

With the child already shame-based, the feeling of discouragement takes over the whole personality. As the shame-based child forms her primitive conscience, shame becomes immorality or neurotic guilt. The conforming child believes he can do nothing right

We cannot afford the luxury known as conscience. The enemy we are up against certainly doesn't have one, so we are obliged to be absolutely rational. Cruel, if you like. People of good will, tolerant, liberal, whatever term you care to use, have always labored under a disadvantage. Those in power, those who want to hold on to power whatever the cost, have one ultimate recourse. If all else fails, they are prepared to kill. This is not available to pacifists.

Time entails memory, memory entails conscience, conscience entails thought for the future, which is itself implied by the existence of time.

had a private account to settle with my conscience. I had funked the place in the foggy twilight, and it does not do to let a matter like that slide. A man's courage is like a horse that refuses a fence; you have got to take him by the head and cram him at it again. If you don't, he will funk worse next time. I hadn't enough courage to be able to take chances with it, though I was afraid of many things, the thing I feared most mortally was being afraid.

I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.

I stopped being watchful and diligent. I rushed after my own lusts. I sinned against the light of the Word and the goodness of God. I have grieved the Spirit, and He is gone. I tempted the Devil, and he has come to me. I have provoked God to anger, and He has left me. I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent. Then

Yea, look diligently, and leave no corner therein unsearched for that treasure hid, even the treasure of your first and second experience of the grace of God towards you.  Remember, I say, the word that first laid hold upon you: remember your terrors of conscience, and fear of death and hell: remember also your tears and prayers to God; yea, how you sighed under every hedge for mercy. 

But one day (amongst all the sermons our parson made) his subject was, to treat of the Sabbath day, and of the evil of breaking that, either with labour, sports or otherwise.  (Now, I was, notwithstanding my religion, one that took much delight in all manner of vice, and especially that was the day that I did solace myself therewith): wherefore I fell in my conscience under his sermon, thinking and believing that he made that sermon on purpose to show me my evil doing. 

Seeing, then, that God prefers his religion; seeing God prefers a tender conscience; seeing they that make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest; and that the poor man that loveth Christ is richer than the greatest man in the world that hates him; Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!

You must do right before you feel good.

As Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, "In matters of fashion, swim with the current. In matters of conscience, stand like a rock.

Developing and maintaining integrity require constant attention. John Weston, chairman and CEO of Automatic Data Processing, Inc., says, "I`ve always tried to live with the following simple rule: Don`t do what you wouldn`t feel comfortable reading about in the newspapers the next day." That`s a good standard all of us should keep.

DETERMINE TO DO THE RIGHT THING, EVEN WHEN IT HURTS.

Sometimes it's hard to pick right from wrong. The best thing we can do is go with our heart and hope it all goes well.

When you hurt someone unjustly, ask them for forgiveness and your conscience will be freed.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil but then also do no evil.

The mark of a strong character lies not in doing what is fun to do or what is easy to do. The sign of deep moral authority appears in the individual who consistently does what they ought to be doing rather than what they feels like doing...