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Conscience Quotes

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Conscience Quotes

“It's an ideal existence. Out in the open. Berating the president of he United States... I'm free to thwart and torment the authorities - that is to say, I can get out my hostilities - because I'm protected in my conscience by the knowledge that what I'm doing is morally right. I've never been so relaxed. I've never been so happy.”

Men I Can States President United Existence United States Authority Conscience Ideals Activism Protected Torment Relaxed Hostility Berating

Author:Benjamin Spock

“Look, I don't know whether God exists. I don't know that. And I tell you one thing, I am not frightened of my beliefs. If there is a God who is threatening me with damnation because I don't believe in Him, so be it. I've lived my life in conscience, and I will suffer damnation willingly in conscience against a tyrannical God who would damn me because, on the basis of the intelligence He gave me, I have come to a conclusion doubting His existence, and I will continue to be a skeptic all of my life.”

“The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.”

Firsts Existence Poverty Conscience Charity Ill Awakening Proof Unjust Robbers Organised

Book:Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms

Source: Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms

“Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh.”

Men Humans Born Human Beings Existence Violence Conditions Normal Eating Conscience Fellows Killing Flesh Fellow Man Barbarism Abhorrent

Book:Why We Can't Wait

Source: Why We Can't Wait

“The adolescent frequently supposes that she is breaking out of the confines of her mundane, schoolgirl existence simply in order to break rules and defy authority. . . . She rids herself of the "oughts" and "musts" that convert every minor infraction into a sin of omission or commission. It certainly does not occur to her or to her family that by questioning the moral standards she erected as a child she is taking the first steps in her journey toward a firmer, more reasonable, less harsh, more ethical form of conscience.”

Firsts Children Doe Form Order Sin Existence Moral Steps Break Journey Authority Standards Conscience Reasonable Ethical First Steps Questioning Minors Adolescence Harsh Mundane Omission

Author:Louise J. Kaplan

“The most significant change wrought by adolescence is the taming of the ideals by which a person measures himself. . . . Love of oneself becomes love of the species. Conscience is pointed to the future, whispering permission to reach beyond the safety net of our ordinary and finite human existence.”

“He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.”

Sound Existence Silence Sky Streets Solitude Conscience Busy Lovely Dawn Nightmare Solitary Amazed Footsteps Serene Deserted Mellow

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre

“Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.”

Source: Into the Wild

“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.”

Men Feels Body Social Existence Accepting Moral Environment Greater Society Subjects Materials Conscience Privilege Superiors Characteristics Superiority Yoke Great Society

Book:Suicide: A Study in Sociology

Source: Suicide: A Study in Sociology

“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”

“There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.”

Source: Letters of Mrs. Adams: the wife of John Adams

“A land ethic...reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.”

Self Turns Individual Effort Existence Responsibility Land Ethics Conscience Capacity Conviction Preserves Conservation Renewal Ecological Individual Responsibility Land Conservation

Author:Aldo Leopold