Conscience Is Quotes & Sayings

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self. — Vaclav Havel

Whatever the new movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs unearths, one thing is doubtless: we will switch our Apple computers right back on (maybe to talk about it, maybe not) right after we see the film. Could anything short of one genuine civic conscience, related in all sincerity stop us from miring ourselves in pirouettes of unreality, counting stickers on blue and white virtual flypaper as dearer in our imaginations than anyone in our daily lives, perhaps even our own family members? — John Thomas Allen

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee
in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ka-Be is the Lager without the physical discomforts. So that, whoever still has some seeds of conscience, feels his conscience re-awaken; and in the long empty days, one speaks of other things than hunger and work and one begins to consider what they have made us become, how much they have taken away from us, what this life is. In this Ka-Be, an enclosure of relative peace, we have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is much more in danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this great danger that threatens us. If from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here. — Primo Levi

Let Christians all understand that conscience is between themselves and God alone. They are not at liberty to impose even their freedom of conscience upon another; but by the laws of the kingdom of Christ, they are obliged even to refrain at times from exercising their own freedom, out of consideration for others. — Ellet J. Waggoner

I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time. — Jerry Falwell

There is no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended nature; there is a kind of I know not what congratulation in well-doing, that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a certain generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience. — Michel De Montaigne

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling in the nation must be quickened, the conscience of the nation must be roused, the propriety of the nation must be startled, the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed: and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. — Frederick Douglass

You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man
or scarce a man yet
the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God's glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, but maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ's blood, by being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times, and by attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that it is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain to in this world. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

I climbed into Misery and called Uncle Bob. "We hooking up?"
"Why does everything out of your mouth make me sound incestuous?"
"Um, I wasn't aware that it did. Perhaps you have a guilty conscience."
"Charley."
"Is there something you need to get off your chest? Besides that skank I saw you with the other day? — Darynda Jones

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins. — Thomas Aquinas

I came to believe it not true that "the
coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man
only one." I think it is the other way around:
It is the brave who die a thousand deaths.
For it is imagination, and not just conscience,
which doth make cowards of us all. Those
who do not know fear are not truly brave.
— Leo Rosten

For such unjust acts of robbery lead automatically to vengeance and punishments, as Augustine's statement bears out. "Gain in the coffer," he says, "harm in the conscience." 55 No unjust gain is without most unjust harm. — Martin Luther

And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade? — Frederic Bastiat

Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. "There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish."
Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. "Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so. — Joe Abercrombie

How did it ever come to this?" I asked him. "The same way it always has and - to our great misfortune - probably always will. With fierce hate harbored by a few and complacency displayed by the rest. All it takes for evil to take hold and flourish is for men and women of conscience to do nothing. — Lisa Shearin

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn't. — Luke Myer

This book attempts to
record a journey to restoration that applies to ordinary people like you and I. It is a shot towards healing. A step headed for a new consciousness. It emerges from a moment in time where all seems lost. — Phindiwe Nkosi

To be satisfied with the acquittal of the world, though accompanied with the secret condemnation of conscience, this is the mark of a little mind; but it requires a soul of no common stamp to be satisfied with its own acquittal, and to despise the condemnation of the world. — Charles Caleb Colton

Since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church and others are non-believers, from the bottom of my heart I give this silent blessing to each and every one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you but knowing that each one of you is a child of God. — Pope Francis

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the conscience of others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable. — George Washington

The best tranquilizer is a clear conscience. — Benjamin Franklin

The law is the public conscience. — Thomas Hobbes

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 ... — Djemal Pasha

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness. — Shannon L. Alder

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience.... Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow.... 589 — Anonymous

Our concept of governing is derived from our view of people. It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of beliefs firmly etched in the national conscience, of all of us. — Barbara Jordan

Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful. — Augustine Of Hippo

No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience. — Ellen Glasgow

Who can assure us that we will be alive tomorrow? Let us listen to the voice of our conscience, to the voice of the royal prophet: "Today, if you hear God's voice, harden not your heart." Let us not put off from one moment to another (what we should do) because the (next moment) is not yet ours. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul
our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment
our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Your journey to capture her soul is one of patience and persistence as it lives in the hidden recess of her heart it is buried in her conscience and holds the key to her most private thoughts and hidden desires the journey is one of understanding and love, not any one can travel there as it is guarded by the heartbreaks of her past and hidden the sea of sorrow and regret.
- Richard M Knittle Jr. — Richard M. Knittle Jr.

If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort. — Mark Twain

I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone's face. — Xu Zhiyong

The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest. — William Dean Howells

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

We believe in a moral code. Communism denies innate right or wrong. As W. Cleon Skousen has said in his timely book, The Naked Communist: The communist 'has convinced himself that nothing is evil which answers the call of expediency.' This is a most damnable doctrine. People who truly accept such a philosophy have neither conscience nor honor. Force, trickery, lies, broken promises are wholly justified. — Ezra Taft Benson

But who, except God, can say whether a man is right or foolish if he follows the call of his conscience? — Muhammad Asad

We have a right to expect a police force that protects our citizens and behaves in a responsible manner ... in the American conscience there is no room for bigotry and racism. — George H. W. Bush

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too - whenever I've lost my way, it's brought me back to center; whenever I forget, it reminds me why I'm here. — Slash, Anthony Bozza

God is to me that creative force, behind and in the universe, who manifests Himself as energy, as life, as order, as beauty, as thought, as conscience, as love. — Henry Sloane Coffin

There is a profound difference between fighting to avoid death and fighting in order to live. Men who fight to avoid death preserve their dignity and one and all - men, women and children - defend it jealously, tenaciously, fiercely ... When men fight to avoid death they cling with a tenacity born of desperation to all that constitutes the living and eternal part of human life, the essence, the noblest and purest element of life: dignity, pride, freedom of conscience. They fight to save their souls. But after the liberation men had to fight in order to live ... It is a humiliating, horrible thing, a shameful necessity, a fight for life. Only for life. Only to save one's skin. — Curzio Malaparte

I think setting goals is critical; having deadlines for ourselves- how much by when? Too many people have these big dreams where they want to have a big house on the ocean. But until we say what ocean, how big, what day, our conscience doesn't know what to do with that information. A positive expectancy, a positive attitude, a belief that your dream is possible is also helpful. — Jack Canfield

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance ...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave. — Neal Shusterman

Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us. — Jim Carroll

Thank you for your kind invitation. However, as a gay man, I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly. — Wentworth Miller

So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night before they fought. Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency
for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear
something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. This idea was in the hearts of the young men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops
knowing that the odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at sunset. — T.H. White

A friend once told me 'The body has nay conscience.' I dinna ken that that's entirely so-but it is true that the body doesna generally admit the possibility of nonexistence. And if ye exist-well, ye need food, that's all. — Diana Gabaldon

Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to the land — Aldo Leopold

Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience. — Vaclav Havel

What is politics but fraud? Whatever your own, honest, candid opinion might be, you have to act according to the creed of the party, [at times] against the voice of your conscience, and thus be dependent upon others for your actions, which is quite opposed to the fundamental principles of Truth. — Meher Baba

Yet she belongs, finally and truly, only to God. The hijab is a symbol of freedom from the male regard, but also, in our time, of freedom from subjugation by the iron fist of materialism, deterministic science, and the death of meaning. It denotes softness, otherness, inwardness. She is not only caught in a world of power relations, but she inhabits a world of love and sacrifice. This freedom, which is of the conscience, is hers to exercise as she will. — Abdal Hakim Murad

One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret - how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that's even possible, interested me. — Ian McEwan

Megan's deception is another hook on which I can hang my conscience. — Jenny Lloyd

All your winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such is the deceitfulness of sin, and the cunning conveyance of that old serpent, that if his head be once entering in, his whole body will easily follow after; and if he make you handsomely to swallow gnats at first, he will make you swallow camels ere all be done. Oh, happy they who dash the little ones of Babylon against the stones (Ps. 137:9)! — George Gillespie

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? — Cyril Connolly

A clear conscience is a soft pillow. — Suzanne Woods Fisher

Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone."
"And conscience," added the bishop.
"It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us. — Victor Hugo

The students we saw were all bright, attractive, and polite, and the teachers all seemed to be smart and dedicated, and I began to appreciate the benefits of a private school education. If only I'd had the opportunity to attend a place like this, who knows what I might have become? Perhaps instead of a mere blood-spatter analyst who slunk away at night to kill without conscience, I could have become a doctor, or a physicist, or even a senator who slunk away at night to kill without conscience. It was terribly sad to think of all my wasted potential. — Jeff Lindsay

The heavenly blessing is to be delivered from the law, sin and death; to be justified and quickened to life: to have peace with God; to have a faithful heart, a joyful conscience, a spiritual consolation; to have the knowledge of Jesus Christ; to have the gift of prophecy, and the revelation of the Scriptures; to have the gift of the Holy Ghost, and to rejoice in God. — Martin Luther

Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. DENIAL, however, the meat business finds indispensable. — John Robbins

It is only because man believes himself to be free, not because he is free, that he experiences remorse and pricks of conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A clean conscience is expensive, it's the reason most men have to live paycheck to paycheck. — David Wong

I would sooner have the approval of my own conscience and know that I had done my duty than to have the praise of all the world and not have the approval of my own conscience. A man's own conscience, when he is living as he should live, is the finest monitor and the best judge in all the world. Men can accuse you of wrong-doing, and it has no effect at all if you know they lie and you have done that which is right — Heber J. Grant

We cannot look to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep. — Carl Von Ossietzky

There is no college for the conscience. — Theodore Parker

Conscience ... seldom comes to a man's aid while he is in the zenith of health and revelling in pomp and luxury upon illgotten spoils. It is generally the last act of his life, and it comes too late to be of much service to others here, or to himself hereafter. — George Washington

Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions
I say the most licentious of human institutions: that is the secret of its popularity.And a woman seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. — George Bernard Shaw

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience. — Sydney Smith

You made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. In this creative restlessness beats and pulsates what is most deeply human - the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience. — Pope John Paul II

Even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat from the hands of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O, Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of conscience! — Susan B. Anthony

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Governments ... should not force and govern belief, which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities. — Katharina Zell

Humor is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience — Friedrich Nietzsche

A bow has no conscience: it is a prolongation of the hand and desire of the archer. It can serve to kill or to meditate. Therefore, always be clear about your intentions. A bow is flexible, but it has its limits. Stretching it beyond its capacity will break it or exhaust the hand holding it. Therefore, try to be in harmony with your instrument and never ask more than it can give. — Paulo Coelho

So long as men die, life will reassert its tragic interest from time to time with fresh energy, and to this interest Christianity alone can respond. If the scientific people could rid us of death, they might indeed hope to win over the heart and conscience of the world, permanently, to some form of non-theistic speculation. As it is, the tide ebbs, as I believe, only that it may flow again. — Henry Parry Liddon

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure. — B.C. Forbes

Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did. — Flannery O'Connor

You are never wrong when you have voted because you've acted in accordance with your conscience and your beliefs, and you've exercised your democratic right, which is, you know, perfectly legitimate in our democracies. — Christine Lagarde

The mind is acquired "human nature". The conscience is inherent "spiritual nature". — Ian Gardner

Subversion can only be treason if government is legitimate. When a government has broken international law and its own internal laws it ceases to be legitimate. At that point a man of conscience and true patriotism is honor bound to take actions intended to restore legitimate government to his country. — G. Russell Overton

Abortion is black genocide ... What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? — Jesse Jackson

The inner censor of the mind of the true believer completes the work of the public censor; his self-discipline is as tyrannical as the obedience imposed by the regime; he terrorizes his own conscience into submission;he carries his private Iron Curtain inside his skull, to protect his illusions against the intrusion of reality. — Arthur Koestler

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience. — Stokely Carmichael

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience. — Lech Walesa

I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You've got to be truthful. I don't think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you've got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it. — Howard Schultz

A person who sins neither in thought nor deed, and is fair and just, gains enormous courage and strength. As a leader, you need courage born of integrity in order to be capable of powerful leadership. To achieve this courage, you must search your heart, and make sure your conscience is clear and your behavior is beyond reproach. — Konosuke Matsushita

It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment. — Theodore Roosevelt

Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane. — Dorothy Day

History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. — Arthur Koestler

Our conscience is our salvation. Our questioning of everything, of right and wrong, of action and consequence, is what defines our purpose. — R.A. Salvatore

The heart symbolizes the center of our moral, spiritual, and intellectual life. It is the seat of our conscience and life. — Billy Graham

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time. — Rod Serling

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God- the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people? — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The ability to make a decision doesn't require the absence of doubt or fear. Both vanish in the presence of responsibility, which emerges naturally in the presence of will. When we know what we truly want, the doubts that blur our decisions, the fears that make us succumb to luck and fate, all become secondary in the face of reason. That's when we understand that our freewill and our options weren't really there. We have created both by desire. The decision is basically conscience asking us to act on our subconscious desires. — Robin Sacredfire

Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others. — Henry Taylor

Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote. — Howard Zinn

It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has, before all of us stood up to say enough is enough. — Nelson Mandela

In every such society, there is a cherished world of myth and metaphor which co-exists with the workaday world. Efforts to reconcile the two are made, and any rough edges at the joints tend to be off-limits and ignored. We compartmentalize. Some scientists do this too, effortlessly stepping between the skeptical world of science and the credulous world of religious belief without skipping a beat. Of course, the greater the mismatch between these two worlds, the more difficult it is to be comfortable, with untroubled conscience, with both. — Carl Sagan