Laurence Sterne quote: “I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.”

“Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.”

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) Norwegian writer

Source: The Wife

“I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police (17 May 1923)
Context: I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policeman with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

“But how shall I excuse it? There are things done which are as holy as the heavens, — which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very blackness of hell!”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 42

“But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police (17 May 1923)
Context: I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policeman with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

“I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police (17 May 1923)

“I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience… but for a criminal government.”

Walter Model (1891–1945) German field marshal

To Colonel Theodor Pilling, Lieutenant Colonel Roger Michael, Major Winrich Behr in the evening of April 20, 1945. They tuned in the Wehrmacht receiver, and listened Joseph Goebbels's speech marking the Hitler's Birthday. Quoted in "Battle for the Ruhr" - Page 378 - by Derek S. Zumbro - 2006

“I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Springfield Illinois (24 October 1952)
Context: I do not believe it is man's destiny to compress this once boundless earth into a small neighborhood, the better to destroy it. Nor do I believe it is in the nature of man to strike eternally at the image of himself, and therefore of God. I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat.
These are my beliefs and I hold them deeply, but they would be without any inner meaning for me unless I felt that they were also the deep beliefs of human beings everywhere. And the proof of this, to my mind, is the very existence of the United Nations.