Home / Topics / Conscience Quotes

Conscience Quotes

Browse 3008 quotes about Conscience.

Conscience Quotes

“Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride.”

Source: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. ... We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.”

Wells Action Values Voice Powerful Behinds Moral Opinion Judgment Creating Intellectual Conscience Concerned Difficulty Tables Noble Levers Refining Valuation

Author:Georg Brandes

“Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life.”

Life Doe Reason Moments Might Interest Results Ought Intellectual Conscience Advantage Areas Determination Prejudice Strict

Book:Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses

Source: Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses

“When I first began acting, I assumed an intellectual responsibility attached to my profession, which I had accepted for a long time. My father taught me that an actor had to have a social and political conscience, and that the work that he does has to reflect from that.”

Firsts Long Doe Political Actors Father Social Acting Responsibility Taught Long Time Intellectual Conscience Profession Accepted

Author:Christopher Reeve

“The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being.”

Source: The Descent of Man

“The collective psychology is something very close to being sacred - we can do it but we don't do it. We should understand that the Holocaust in the European conscience is reaching a point which is very close to what is sacred for people in the Southern countries, whether they are Muslims or not. Because of that we need to try to have intellectual empathy.”

People Needs Should Trying Country Can Do Psychology Intellectual Empathy Conscience Sacred Reaching Collectives Southern Holocaust

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.”

Ifs Mind Ideas Matter Individual Rooms Moral Vision Knowledge Courage Learning Intellectual Conscience Management Committees Confronting Moral Compass Moral Life

Author:Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

“Jesus did not get stuck in intellectual arguments with people. He did not go for the intellect; He went for the conscience. He spoke to that part of the person that knows the difference between right and wrong instinctively.”

People Knows Persons Jesus Differences Intellectual Conscience Argument Intellect Stuck Spokes

Author:Kirk Cameron

“The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.”

Men Two Reason Age Death Religion Religious Moral Intellectual Conscience No Reason Objections Inhumanity Moral Conscience

Book:Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

Source: Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.”

Want Believe Seems Cities Demand Intellectual Conscience Majority Desert Solitary Again And Again

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.”

Men Self Learning Teaching Intellectual Conscience Intelligence Advertising Self Respect Substitutes Editors Cynicism Businessman Cripples Communicators

Author:Russell Lynes

“The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.”

Source: Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution

“Be not content with the common place in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.”

World Heart Character Use Strong Common Amount Equal Ambition Intellectual Conscience Impression Lasting Very Strong Commonplace Attainment

Author:William Jewett Tucker