Quotes about conscience
page 8

“So long as colonies and immigrant sections exist, with their inferior housing, sanitation, and care, Americanization will fail. It matters not at all that we satisfy our conscience by saying that immigrants prefer to live this way or that they lived this way in their own country. To say this is to forget that the crowded dwelling in Italy through which permeated the beauty and art, the religion, tradition, and association of the old country, is vastly different from the huts across the railroad track filled with strangers to whom the shop and saloon are the centers of gravity.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Religion, Beauty, Art, Way

“We try to transform our spirits using nonviolent means towards everybody; and this love and sacrifice gives us the guarantee that what we cannot change with our own human strength will be changed by the future, by the infinite, by nature, by God (according to the various faiths, it doesn’t matter; what matters is this opening beyond our actual forces, in the name of love for everybody, of the honesty, of the purity of the values on which conscience feeds).”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love, God, Faith, Nature

“Justice, under capitalism, works not from a notion of obedience to moral law, or to conscience, or to compassion, but from the assumption of a duty to preserve a social order and the legal “rights” that constitute that order, especially the just which preserves the system of justice even if the system is itself routinely unjust.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Justice, Law

“When it comes to critical questions of religion, freedom of conscience, belief and speech is a paper tiger in Nigeria. In fact, religion is presented as inadmissible of criticism, of opposing views and opinions whether it is the status of women, of children, gay, or of non-believers. Religious positions are cast on stones. Views that are critical of religion easily get framed as blasphemy, which is a crime under Sharia law and is punishable by death or imprisonment.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

Death, Women, Children, Religion

“Greatness loves itself, and all healthy instincts decline to flagellate themselves daily with the whip of altruism. What is great must will to do more than its mere duty; it must give, make others happy, and, be it at the cost of itself, its own wellbeing, its own money or life, it must will to pour forth its blessing over others, to the extent even of self-sacrifice—but not, as Christianity demands, from unegoistic motives; the impulse must come from a sense of pleasure, from overflowing energy, from need of bloodletting, so as to unburden the full heart. All acts then derived from conscience and duty, or done with a wry countenance out of obedience to the Categorical Imperative, seem to the great man, from his point of view, through this very fact contemptible, even as he has an unsurmountable prejudice against men and nations who are always prating of those words, conscience and duty.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 81.

Love, Life, Men, Money

“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Marble Faun

Source: The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter IV: The Spectre of the Catacomb

“That image or rather that Person, so human, yet so entirely Divine, has a power to fill the imagination, to arrest the affections, to deepen and purify the conscience, which nothing else in the world has.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 61.

World, Imagination, Personality

“Let me say again that I am not impugning the motives of the men in Wall Street. They may think that that is the best way to create prosperity for the country. When you have got the market in your hand, does honesty oblige you to turn the palm upside down and empty it? If you have got the market in your hand and believe that you understand the interest of the country better than anybody else, is it patriotic to let it go? I can imagine them using this argument to themselves.
The dominating danger in this land is not the existence of great individual combinations, — that is dangerous enough in all conscience, — but the combination of the combinations, — of the railways, the manufacturing enterprises, the great mining projects, the great enterprises for the development of the natural water-powers of the country, threaded together in the personnel of a series of boards of directors into a "community of interest" more formidable than any conceivable single combination that dare appear in the open.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section VIII: “Monopoly, Or Opportunity?”, p. 186 http://books.google.com/books?id=MW8SAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=%22Let+me+say+again%22 1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

Men, Way, Imagination, Communication

““Why the hell are you here?”
“A matter of conscience.”
“Really?” said Locke. “Yours? You keep alluding to its existence. Somehow I’m not convinced.””

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 9 “The Five-Year Game: Reasonable Doubt” section 1 (p. 543)

Hell

“Irrespective of the conflict with America, it is a human duty to show sympathy with the American people and be with them at these horrifying and awesome events which are bound to awaken human conscience. When I was five, my brother was shot by an Israeli soldier, since then I have been dedicated to uniting the Arab countries throughout the Middle East and retain a trade flow with the west.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, quoted in CBSNews.com (12 September 2001) "Global Outrage At Terror Attacks"
Speeches

People, Country

“Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Soul

“His conscience must have gotten tired of nagging him and delivered an ultimatum.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 10 (p. 104)

“For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. … In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

2 Facebook posts http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=129786343731298&id=66435815451 at 13:41 (28 July 2010) http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=113868381998571&id=66435815451; quoted in "Anne Rice: 'I Quit Being A Christian' " by Jessie Kunhardt in The Huffington Post (29 July 2010) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/anne-rice-i-quit-being-a_n_663915.html

Life, Hostility, Birth, Understanding

“The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

God, Faith, Law, Way

“Lord of myself, accountable to none,
But to my conscience, and my God alone.”

John Oldham (poet) (1653–1683) English satirical poet and translator

Satire addressed to a Friend, line 36; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

God

“We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.”

Larisa Alexandrovna (1971) Ukrainian-American journalist, essayist, poet

Mr. Bush, Go Cheney Yourself! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/mr-bush-go-cheney-yours_b_6528.html.

“Where conscience finds moral fault in purportedly divine imperatives, the imperatives need to be reexamined.”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

“My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Call for Reckoning http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/transcript3.php3 - Pew Forum conference (25 January 2002). N.b. this speech was later modified into an article - God's Justice and Ours http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32 which repeats much the same points. 2000s

Law

“Starting today I will obey my conscience. As a Christian I do not have the right to let these women and men die.”

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954) Portuguese diplomat

Quoted in Huffington Post, 18 April 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louisphilippe-mendes/holocaust-remembrance-day_b_1434733.html

Women, Men

“That was another thing she taught me. That you are what you do. To Providence—or Progress or the Future or before any other sort of judgment apart from our own conscience—what we have done, not what we have thought, is the result we are judged by.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Prologue (p. 3)
Culture series, Inversions (1998)

Future

“Intellect had run up against emotion. My conscience told me to run, yet some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.”

Tim O'Brien book The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried (1990), On the Rainy River

War, People, Stupidity, Thinking

“This attempt to usurp the government by subverting the Constitution of the United States was the policy of the greatest leader the system of slavery has ever had in this country — that pagan of our politics, Mr. Calhoun. While other statesmen merely saw, he foresaw. His mind, of large forecast and comprehensive grasp, perceived that the logic of history, of civilization, of our national idea, of the universal conscience, was against slavery. But he had seen the conscience of the country, roused for a moment in the Missouri debate, drop asleep again. And with the audacity of genius he resolved to stun the country into acquiescence by claiming that slavery was the fundamental law of the land.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Law, History, Idea, Universe

“The archbishop's support for this law [the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2006, see above] violates numerous Anglican Communion documents that call for a "listening process" involving gay Christians and their leaders. But his contempt for international agreements also extends to Articles 18-20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which articulates the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, association and assembly. Surprisingly, few voices -- Anglican or otherwise -- have been raised in opposition to the archbishop. When I compare this silence with the cacophony that followed the Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man who lives openly with his partner, as the bishop of New Hampshire, I am compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

John Chane, Bishop of Washington
Criticism

Marriage, Religion, Law, Sex

“The only assurance that I can now give of the future is reference to the past. The course which I have taken in the past in connection with this rebellion must be regarded as a guaranty of the future. My past public life, which has been long and laborious, has been founded, as I in good conscience believe, upon a great principle of right, which lies at the basis of all things. The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the Government in passing through its present perils will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights more permanent and enduring than heretofore. I must be permitted to say, if I understand the feelings of my own heart, that I have long labored to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the great mass of the American people. Toil and an honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot. Duties have been mine; consequences are God's. This has been the foundation of my political creed, and I feel that in the end the Government will triumph and that these great principles will be permanently established.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Quote, First Presidential address (1865)

Life, God, People, Feeling

“A clear conscience doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t any conscience.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Featherisms (2008)

“The unspoken ideology of capitalism didn’t admit, back then, of any corporate duty beyond making a return on investment for the shareholders while obeying the law.
Then the terrible teens hit, with a global recession followed by a stuttering shock wave of corporate scandals as rock-ribbed enterprises were exposed as hollow husks run by conscience-free predators who were even less community-minded and altruistic than gangsters. The ravenous supermarket chains had gutted the entire logistic and retail sector, replacing high-street banks and post offices as well as food stores and gas stations, recklessly destroying community infrastructure; manufacturers had outsourced production to the cheapest overseas bidders, hollowing out the middle-class incomes on which consumer capitalism depended: The prison-industrial complex, higher education, and private medical sectors were intent on milking a public purse that no longer had a solid tax base with which to pay. Maximizing short-term profit worked brilliantly for sociopathic executives looking to climb the promotion ladder—but as a long-term strategy for stability, a spiraling Gini coefficient left a lot to be desired.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 7, “Liz: Black Swans” (pp. 82-83)

Education, Law, Food, Communication

“They are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life…It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who…promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Cheers.
Speech at Blackheath (28 October 1871), quoted in The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
1870s

Life, Happiness, Family, Home

“They have cheveril consciences that will stretch.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 2, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

“If we do not keep alive the flame of freedom that flame will go out, and every noble ideal will die with it. It is not by force of weapons but by force of ideas that we seek to spread liberty to the world' s oppressed. It is not only ideals, but conscience that impels us to do so. Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for? Does the way they handled the Korean airliner atrocity suggest that they ever considered such questions? No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil. To them it is the system that counts, and all men must conform.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at the Winston Churchill Foundation Award dinner (29 September 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105450 Second term as Prime Minister

Life, Men, World, Way

“One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings of minorities is none the less a disturbing product of war psychology. The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people. The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. Progress depends very largely on the encouragement of variety. Whatever tends to standardize the community, to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought, tends to fossilize society. If we all believed the same thing and thought the same thoughts and applied the same valuations to all the occurrences about us, we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis. It is the ferment of ideas, the clash of disagreeing judgments, the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. It is not possible to learn much from those who uniformly agree with us. But many useful things are learned from those who disagree with us; and even when we can gain nothing our differences are likely to do us no harm. In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness to outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. Under that guaranty we have erected a system which certainly is justified by its fruits. Under no other could we have dared to invite the peoples of all countries and creeds to come here and unite with us in creating the State of which we are all citizens.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War, People, Religion, Feeling

“To him, the one Absolute Conscience, in every moral disaster our conscience turns for assured refuge and certain renewal of moral courage and strength. That is the real act and infallible function of Prayer.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix B: The System in its Ethical Necessity and its Practical Bearings, p.403

Courage

“Even if I am dismissed, I can only act as a Christian, as my conscience tells me.”

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954) Portuguese diplomat

Quoted in The Independent, Sunday 17 October 2010

“We will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Explaining the decision to reject American funding as a protest over liberal theology and practices, including the ordination of homosexuals.

Money, Faith

“Virtue is the death of conscience because it is the habit of Good, and yet the ethic of the honest man infinitely prefers virtue to the noblest agonies of conscience. Thus, being poses nonbeing and eliminates it. There is only being”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(402).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Death

“As parliamentarians you must carefully examine your conscience on the deliberation of sensitive issues and not be swayed by divisive racial remarks which have been a common and unfortunate hallmark of debate in our Parliament.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Speech opening Parliament, 1 August 2005 (excerpts)

“Is LISP a candidate for a scripting language? While you can certainly write things rapidly in it, I cannot in good conscience call LISP a scripting language. By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals… And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

Public Talks, The State of the Onion 11

“To deal with the much-discussed but still poorly understood complex of economic affairs known as globalization, we must examine its several forms from a Renewed Darwinian Theory point of view. Some can have positive effects for all parties while others inherently benefit the rich and strong at the expense of the poor and weak. Furthermore, some can be beneficial but also lend themselves to abuse, especially by people without a conscience, and therefore call for some kind of world-level impulse/check/balance control.”

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Excerpt from: " The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-drive-to-acquires-impact-on-globalization," at hbswk.hbs.edu, 23 august 2010. Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, 2010

People, World, Strong

“…; but conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep; and habit is our idea of eternity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Idea, Sleep

“The great question is, to discover not what governments prescribe, but what they ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Question

“Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 35.

Happiness, Dreams, Personality

“… confess now- could you lie with the wife of your friend? could you debauch his sister? could you defraud a poor creditor? could you by gambling rejoice in the outwitting a novice of all his possessions?- No! why then thou art a silly fellow, incumbered with three abominable inmates; to wit- Conscience, Honesty, and Good-nature”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 43: 17 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ).

Lie, Art, Nature, Sister

“We are not called on to believe this or that doctrine which may be proposed to us till we can do so from honest conviction. But we are called on to trust, — to trust ourselves to God, being sure that He will lead us right, — to keep close to Him, — and to trust the promises which He whispers through our conscience; this we can do, and we ought to do.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 195.

God

“I venture to say quite plainly: the oppressed and the exploited have a right to rebel, because they have to reclaim their rights until they enjoy their full share in the common patrimony. The Modern School, however, has to deal with children, whom it prepares by instruction for the state of manhood, and it must not anticipate the cravings and hatreds, the adhesions and rebellions, which may be fitting sentiments in the adult. In other words, it must not seek to gather fruit until it has been produced by cultivation, nor must it attempt to implant a sense of responsibility until it has equipped the conscience with the fundamental conditions of such responsibility. Let it teach the children to be men; when they are men, they may declare themselves rebels against injustice.”

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (1859–1909) Spanish anarchist

The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School (1908)

Men, Children, School, Sense

““The two main directions of modern ethics with their affirmation of the importance of individual conscience and the extension of moral concern for all rational beings, as worthy of equal rights, imply a hard struggle to deny absolute value to ecclesiastical or state institutions.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

“I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Death, Beauty, Fools, Color

“Yes, so it is that knowledge itself must die in order to blossom forth again in death as will; the freedom of thought, belief, and conscience, these wonderful flowers of three centuries will sink back into the lap of mother earth so that a new freedom, the freedom will, will be nourished with its most noble juices.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

Death, Flowers, Knowledge, Freedom

“Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Art, Light, Science

“A minority may do for a society what the conscience does for an individual.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

“To whom had he retailed his conscience, Sandra wondered, and what was the going price these days?”

Robert Charles Wilson book Vortex

Source: Vortex (2011), Chapter 9 (p. 118)

“I surrendered my moral conscience to the fact that I was a soldier, and therefore a cog in a relatively low position of a great machine.”

Otto Ohlendorf (1907–1951) German general

Quoted in "Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror" - Page 92 - by Os Guinness - 2005.

“My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty…”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

Quoted in "The Bormann Brotherhood" - Page 182 - by William Stevenson - 1973.

“I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.”

Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) Polish writer

Quoted by Michael Hamburger, in his book, The Truth of Poetry.
Quoes

History, Sense

“Tactically, conceptualism is no doubt the strongest position of the three; for the tired nominalist can lapse into conceptualism and still allay his puritanic conscience with the reflection that he has not quite taken to eating lotus with the Platonists.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

“Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to M.V. Kiseleva (January 14, 1887
Letters

Literature, Effort

“In the depth of his soul he knew that his action was so base, abominable and cruel that, with that action upon his conscience, not only would he have no right to condemn others but he should not be able to look others in the face, to say nothing of considering himself the good, noble, magnanimous man he esteemed himself. And he had to esteem himself as such in order to be able to continue to lead a valiant and joyous life. And there was but one way of doing so, and that was not to think of it. This he endeavored to do.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 18

Life, Way, Soul, Thinking

“A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.”

Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) Leftist journalist and writer

New Statesman and Society (8 February 1991).

War, Parting

“The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 17.

People, World, Study, Science

“My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William talking about his personal life, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 176

Men, Hurt, Dead

“Marjorie thought: It always comes down to something like this, doesn’t it. No matter what our consciences say, no matter how much doctrine we’ve been taught, no matter how many ethical considerations we’ve chewed and swallowed and tried to digest, it always comes down to us arming ourselves with weapons as deadly as we can manage and going out into combat…”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 377)

“The art of thinking is also the art of believing, because no human being at the present stage of civilization could safely call all his individual and social beliefs into question again or submit them to his conscience. To change all one's opinions is a mental diversion which requires leisure for its indulgence. In order to live a life of action, man must accept most of the moral, social, and religious laws which have been recognized as necessary by his predecessors.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

Life, Law, Art, Question

“The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book IV, Chapter 8, "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?"
Mere Christianity (1952)

“Susan had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Susan B. Anthony (1884)

Soul

“As I well: I wish they had told me so before, since the expecting of a release put a stop to some business; thou mayst tell my father, who I know will ask thee, these words: that my prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man; I have no need to fear, God will make amends for all; they are mistaken in me; I value not their threats and resolutions, for they shall know I can weary out their malice and peevishness, and in me shall they all behold a resolution above fear; […]”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Refusing to recant his ideas, after being imprisoned in the Tower of London for expressing his ideas on religious freedoms (1668 or 1669), as quoted in William Penn, America's First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace http://www.quaker.org/wmpenn.html by Jim Powell.

God, Fear, Business

“Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", p. 23 (Nook Edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Peace

“You English are never as thorough, never as decided, never as dead-set in your views as your cousins over the Channel. You are a people of compromises, of opportunism, of amiable and business-like settlements; you can even strike a bargain with your own conscience and live ever happy afterwards. … This is no doubt a great virtue, because it has preserved you from great follies, and it is no doubt a great vice, because it has sadly refrigerated your enthusiasm and your “feu sacré.””

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. viii-ix.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Happiness, People, Business, Dead

“Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to his son, Scott R. Hayes (8 March 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

God

“Aniela knows perfectly that I live for her only, exist through her; that all my thoughts belong to her, my actions have only her in view; that she is to me an issue of life and death; and in spite of all that she calmly decides to go away. Whether I should perish or beat my head against the wall, she never so much as considered. She will be more at ease when she ceases to see me writhing like a beetle stuck on a pin; she will be no longer afraid of my kissing her feet furtively, or startling that virtuous conscience. How can she hesitate when such excellent peace can be got, at so small a price as cutting somebody's throat! Thoughts like these spun across my brain by thousands.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

11 July
Without Dogma (1891)

Life, Death, Peace, Kiss

“The person engaged in action is always unconscionable; no one except the contemplative has a conscience.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende.
Maxim 241, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Personality

“[About Jews] Among other nations, the vital problems are: a good crop, extension of the boundaries, strong armies, colonies; among us, if we wish to be true to ourselves, the vital questions are: conscience, freedom, culture, ethics.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Verk, edited by Kletzkin, xi. 277f.

Question, Problem, Freedom, Strong

“Truth is a rock, and on that rock faith plants its foot, and feels secure. But even on the rock you cannot live long without an atmosphere, and the believer's atmosphere is love. That atmosphere, is viewless, invisible, often forgotten; still it is real, and it is vital. " The words that I speak are spirit," says the Saviour. Over and above the resting place which weary spirits have found at His feet, which guilty consciences have found in His arms, there is an afflatus gone forth from those words of His, which to inhale and be surrounded with is like entering heaven's vestibule.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 92.

Love, Truth, Faith, Feeling

“There is no definition of cults in law. on the other hand, these organizations know perfectly evade justice by hiding their true nature, since you are aware that freedom of conscience in France is a fundamental freedom enshrined in all our principles and our texts.”

Manuel Valls (1962) French Socialist Party (PS) politician

Justice, Law, Nature, Freedom

“Others must do as their own consciences require, but I stand with @monacharenEPPC. She stands for true conservative, American, and Judaeo-Christian values.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/967529815317274624 (24 February 2018) 2018

“…we like somebody who succeeds with such bad conscience, and who seems to wish that he had the nerve to be a failure or, better still, something to which the terms success and failure don’t apply—as when Mallory said, about Everest: “Success is meaningless here.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“ ‘Very Graceful Are the Uses of Culture’ ”, p. 206
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Failure, Success

“Let it, then, be henceforth proclaimed to the world, that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.”

John Tyler (1790–1862) American politician, 10th President of the United States (in office from 1841 to 1845)

Funeral oration for Thomas Jefferson (11 July 1826).

God, World

“Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love-it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Source: Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/26/world/asia/29leekuanyew-quotes.html

Love, People, Making love, Sense

“Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

Feeling, Parting

“No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but oh, thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation that impelled her to the crime!”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Anonymous essay signed "A" in The Revolution, August 8, 1869. Often attributed to Susan B. Anthony, who was the owner of the newspaper. http://www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm Ann Dexter Gordon, PhD, leader of a research project at Rutgers University which has examined 14,000 documents related to Anthony and Stanton, writes that "no data exists that Anthony ... ever used that shorthand for herself" http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/05/sarah_palin_is_no_susan_b_anthony.html, and that the essay presents material which clashes with Anthony's "known beliefs". http://www.womensenews.org/story/abortion/061006/susan-b-anthonys-abortion-position-spurs-scuffle Misattributed

Love, Life, Death, Fate

“To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Cap. X - Bay of Pigs: On March 29, 1961 Senator Fulbright gave Kennedy a memorandum opposing moral and legal grounds.
A Thousand Days:John F.Kennedy in the White House (1965)

World, Support

“It was not a very white jacket, but white enough, in all conscience, as the sequel will show.
The way I came by it was this…”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 1, First lines

Way

“Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 9. p. 63

Men

“Society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make … lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, then, simply not to outrage their consciences.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life, Men, Nature

“The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority, but by the unity of… faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel… The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to… make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed… to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the… Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development… and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles… occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men, God, People, Family

“If you happen into company where the talk runs into party, obscemty, scandal, folly, or vice of any kind, you had better pass for morose or unsocial, among people whose good opinion is not worth having, than shock your own conscience by joining in conversation which you must disapprove of.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

People

“In general, the Church has often rendered valuable aid by joining the advanced public conscience of any period in its protest against some single intolerable evil, but it has accepted as inevitable the general social system under which the world was living at the time, and has not undertaken any thoroughgoing social reconstruction in accordance with Christian principles.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 149-150

World, Evil, Time

“By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 10–23

Death, Happiness, Feeling, Silence

“The engineers are taking their stand on grounds of conscience… Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. These people are our people and we should take a principled stand, together.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech on Hugh Scanlon's union's rejection of the Industrial Relations Act in Wells, Somerset (23 November 1973).
1970s

People, Law

“Unhappily, to borrow the words of Ganganelli, a large majority of mankind are "mere abortions": calling themselves rational and intelligent beings, they act as if they had neither brains nor conscience, and as if there were no God, no accountability, no heaven, no hell, no eternity.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Introductory Remarks
Thoughts on African Colonization (1832)

God, Intelligence, Hell

“O man, no matter what you have studied or how much you have studied, do not follow the ways of your mind with conceit in your learning. Ask a man of wisdom who is on the path and follow his directions. If you do not meet a man of wisdom, lay your heart open and ask even a tree or a wall. The power of God within your heart called conscience will caution you and guide you. It will say, "Go," or "Don't go," "Right," or "Wrong." If your heart is open, your conscience will provide useful fruit which will benefit your journey through life.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Life, Wisdom, God, Way

“That should be your determination. As a man, in your right front pants pocket is a small inside watch pocket. Keep pliers there, and when you go to the bathroom, once a day, pinch your love organ. Cut the skin a little bit as a warning. If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip. Even if it takes that extreme measure, we have to make sure our mind and body become one.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Purity, Lineage and the Love Organ (of Life) http://www.unification.net/news/news20010218_2.html (2001-02-18)

Love

“True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience of men such as Brandeis.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Albert Einstein, statement sent to the Boston journal The Jewish Advocate on 1931-10-19 on the occasion of Justice Brandeis' seventy-fifth birthday, quoted in Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton University Press, 1981), ISBN 0-691-02368-9, p. 85.

Men

“Their [Athenians] history furnishes the classic example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the constitution which had given them prosperity and equality and the pride of freedom…They tolerated considerable variety of opinion, and great license of speech…Thus they became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs exercised its demoralizing influence on the illustrious Democracy of Athens.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

People, Exercises, Democracy, History

“I shut my eyes and clenched my hands behind me and saw, in lightning flashes, myself doing ferocious things, like pushing him down an endless flight of stairs, or dropping him without warning into a bottomless well, or stringing him up to a stout beam and leaving him to dangle, or — or other things of the sort; no guns, no knives, no baseball bats, nothing to cause outright bloodshed, just silent, grim, sudden murder by hand was my intention. All this was far beyond my bodily powers of course, and I like to believe beyond my criminal powers too. For I woke when we struck the searing hot light of the August morning as if I had come out of a nightmare, horrified at my own thoughts and feeling as if I had got some incurable wound to my very humanity — as indeed I had. However inflicted, a wound there was, with painful scar tissue, left upon my living self by that appalling event. My conscience stirs as if, in my impulse to do violence to my enemy, I had assisted at his crime.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)

Pain, Feeling, Light

“The Stoics could only advise the wise man to hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten law in his heart. But when Christ said: "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's," those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Death, God, Law, Freedom

“Acting on conscience and principle in a manner — is the manner — in which we express our moral selves and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

Loyalty

“Contempt of all outward things, which come in competition with duty, fulfills the ideal of human greatness. This conviction, that readiness to sacrifice life's highest material good and life itself, is essential to the elevation of human nature, is no illusion of ardent youth, nor outburst of blind enthusiasm. It does not yield to growing wisdom. It is confirmed by all experience. It is sanctioned by conscience — that universal and eternal lawgiver whose chief dictate is, that every thing must be yielded up for the right.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 533.

Life, Wisdom, Youth, Nature

“Actions may be laudable or blameable; but they cannot be reasonable: Laudable or blameable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable. The merit and demerit of actions frequently contradict, and sometimes controul our natural propensities. But reason has no such influence. Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason. Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Nature, Sense

“There is nothing in the world that could make me turn from the law. With a clear conscience, I am prepared to answer for each and every one of my political and administrative orders and actions, and to do so before the court of public opinion…”

Ahmed Djemal (1872–1922) Ottoman general

Quoted in "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility" - by Taner Akçam, Paul Bessemer - History - 2006 - Page 246.
Quotess

World, Law