Quotes & Sayings About Conscience

As Trout departed, he sent this telepathic message to the Creator of the Universe, serving as His eyes and ears and conscience: Am headed for Forty-second Street now. How much do you already know about Forty-second Street? — Kurt Vonnegut

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. — Brenna Yovanoff

Isolated in the attic, Anne could only examine her own history and her own conscience, and try to locate the wellspring of her sadness and her rage. — Francine Prose

I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience. — George Washington

A child motivated by competitive ideals will grow into a man without conscience, shame, or true dignity. — George Sand

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

No one should be forced to violate one's conscience, nor should anyone be forced out of service of the common good because there are some things their conscience tells them they cannot do. — Donald Wuerl

Legendary rock musician. Poet laureate of the working class. Voice of America's conscience. — Harrison Howe

Feelings could override facts, as facts could alter feelings. Choose the truth first, rather than following after feelings. — Anthony Liccione

Oh but I'd pay anything to keep my conscience clean.I'm keeping my eyes on the the exit sign. Steady now. — St. Vincent

You been mud wrestling..?' 'Only with my conscience.' 'Really? Who won?' 'Well, it was one of those rare occasions when violence really doesn't solve anything. — Iain M. Banks

Though I no longer presumed to have a conscience, I have never once lacked feelings. — Lyndsay Faye

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

For our society to be better, we must revive our conscience and do Godly things. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

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

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

Order drives one inward, and disorder outward, and between both, conscience has a chance to rediscover itself. — Robin Sacredfire

I am not one of your repentant sinners, Kenneth. I have lived my life - God, what a life! - and as I have lived I shall die, unflinching and unchanged. Dare one to presume that a few hours spent in whining prayers shall atone for years of reckless dissoluteness? 'Tis a doctrine of cravens, who, having lacked in life the strength to live as conscience bade them, lack in death the courage to stand by that life's deeds. I am no such traitor to myself. — Rafael Sabatini

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

He's going to kill me," Peppone murmured, his jaw drooping, "or at least send out the order to have someone take care of me. Well," with a sigh, "might as well get rid of this body before the others wake up." He canted his head and mused to himself. "Maybe I should carve it up first."
"At long last," Bartleby cried, raising his eyes and wringing his hands, "somebody who has no regard for collective conscience and general morality. Oh, happy, happy morning!"
"Take care, Peppone," Danaco laughed, "if you have so little regard for life and the creatural condition, Bartleby will attach himself to you and never leave you for a moment. — Michelle Franklin

Something's still wrong
the same thing that was wrong forty years ago. A malignancy, a tumor, slowly growing in someone's heart. A conscience that's seared. — Heather Day Gilbert

Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration. — Llewellyn Rockwell

Both humans and dogs love to play well into adulthood, and individuals from both species occasionally display evidence of having a conscience. — Jon Winokur

There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it. — Jean De La Bruyere

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

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

Happy people create happiness; it's the most contagious energy on Earth. Fearful, sad, angry, or miserable people only tend to spread these same qualities, even if working in the name of social conscience. — Dan Millman

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

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

There isn't one single thing that will end unwinding. It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it's got a conscience. -Sonia — Neal Shusterman

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

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

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

At the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. — Joseph Story

She's you, without your conscience, or your feelings. She's you without your humanity."
"You're saying she's a mood swing?"
He shrugged. "Or maybe you're her mood swing."
"Don't even joke about that. — Derek Landy

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

First, there must be talent ... Then there must be discipline ... Then there must be ... and absolute conscience ... to prevent faking. — Ernest Hemingway,

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

By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind. — Edward T. Hall

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

I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. — Pol Pot

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

Four men entered Gregor's office. Miles recognized them at once; he was Barrayaran enough that his first thought was a conscience-stricken, My God, what
have I done wrong? Good sense reasserted itself; his feats of evil would have had to have been downright heroic to rate the attention of four Imperial Auditors at one time. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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

Though sin may be in the Christian, yet it hath no more dominion over him; he hath an unfeigned respect to all God's commandments, making conscience even of little sins and little duties. — Joseph Alleine

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 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

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

At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly. — Darin Strauss

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

I'm the first kid to write of hearts, lies, and friends, and I'm sorry my conscience called in sick again. I've got arrogance down to a science. — Pete Wentz

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. — Mark Twain

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

A nagging bitch of a doubt, burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear — Joseph Heller

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

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him. — Erik Larson

The successful truck gardener can never go out to dinner in the summer or spend a week end away, because his conscience tells him he has to be at home eating up his corn or packaging his beans for the freezer. — Phyllis McGinley

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! — Francis De Sales

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

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right. — Gustave Flaubert

Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the conscience. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. — Robert Louis Stevenson

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

Many a criminal has finally given himself over to the authorities because the accusations of a guilty conscience were worse than prison bars. — Billy Graham

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

Holy Mother Church teaches us to end the year and also our days with an examination of conscience ... to be grateful and to ask for forgiveness. — Pope Francis

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

It was simply a way of giving herself some relief, because actually they were joined till death by a bond that was more solid than love: a common prick of conscience. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for. — Logan Pearsall Smith

By God, no matter what Republicans say, the people of this country really do care about each other. We are not a cold people. By God, when John F. Kennedy said, "Ask what you can do for your country," he spoke to this country's heart and conscience. — Garrison Keillor

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

Can we ever break free of the devices and desires of our own hearts? Might not our conscience be telling us what we most want to hear? — P.D. James

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

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

The entire perks that I need are to let me do my job with full honesty to my conscience. — Amit Abraham

Fear nothing but your conscience. — Suzy Kassem

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

Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear. — Suzy Kassem

Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man. — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

Would it not be better to go home and live at the family park all the year round, and hunt, and attend Quarter Sessions, and be able to declare morning and evening with a clear conscience that the country was going to the dogs? Such was the mental working of many a Conservative who supported Mr. Daubeny on this occasion. — Anthony Trollope

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

We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience. — Blaise Pascal

In 2010, I suggested that if you are a good Muslim with a good conscience, go and look for a better God, and I think that was juvenile of me. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Are you one who looks on? or lends a hand? - or who looks away, sidles off? ... Third question for the conscience. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no college for the conscience. — Theodore Parker

Murder was deeply human. A person was killed and a person killed. And what powered the final thrust wasn't a whim, wasn't an event. It was an emotion. Something once healthy and human had become wretched and bloated and finally buried. But not put to rest. It lay there, often for decades, feeding on itself, growing and gnawing, grim and full of grievance. Until it finally broke free of all human restraint. Not conscience, not fear, not social convention could contain it. When that happened, all hell broke loose. And a man became a monster. — Louise Penny