“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”
Source: Richard III
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William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616Related quotes
“The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.”
"A Note on George the Fourth," http://books.google.com/books?id=NA0HAQAAIAAJ&q=%22The+NonConformist+Conscience+makes+cowards+of+us+all%22&pg=PA250#v=onepage The Yellow Book (October 1894)
"King George the Fourth," http://books.google.com/books?id=OvlGAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+Nonconformist+Conscience+makes+cowards+of+us+all%22&pg=PA63#v=onepage The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)
“It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards.”
Source: The Complete Persepolis
“Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
Andrew Cummins (@Vodkaninja), Twitter, December 4 2013. Screen capture https://homoeconomicusnet.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/did-christopher-hitchens-say-that-on-islamophobia-or-someone-on-twitter/.
Misattributed
“I die with a clear conscience, I die fighting, not like a coward.”
Said while being taken to his execution, as quoted in Philip Foner, The Case of Joe Hill (International Publishers Co., 1966), p. 108
If you start an argument with yourself, that makes two people at least, and when you have two people, one of them starts appeasing the other.
"Epistle from Mother Carey's Chicken"
Peter quotes 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all' from the 'To be, or not to be' speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1.
Birds of America (1971)
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 13.