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Conscience Quotes

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Conscience Quotes

“A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

Men God Dream Order Accepting Moral Conscience Gains Curse Moral Conscience

Book:A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner

Source: A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Way Littles Long I Can Eye Universe Justice Moral Atheism Figures Divine Conscience Sight Atheist Curves Arcs

Book:Centenary Edition [of the Writings of Theodore Parker]

Source: Centenary Edition [of the Writings of Theodore Parker]

“Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.”

People Matter Poor Moral Morality Conscience Poor People

Book:Train to Pakistan

Source: Train to Pakistan

“I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.”

“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

“It isn't the absence of conscience or values that prevents us from being all we should be, it is simply the lack of moral courage.”

Should Values Moral Courage Conscience Absence Moral Courage

Author:Michael Josephson

“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

“The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.”

Men May Given Moral Vision Arms Exercise Degrees Conscience Stronger Educational Legs

Book:Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson

Source: Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson

“I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding States are civilized men as well as ourselves, that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity and not to us. It is for them to decide therefore the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits.”

People Men Wells Matter States Religious Moral Rights Bears Limits Conscience Constitution Slavery Settling Abortion Civilized Posterity Missouri Religious Rights

Author:Stephen A. Douglas

“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

“There comes a time when a moral man can't obey a law which his conscience tells him is unjust.”

Men Law Liberty Moral Conscience Libertarian Libertarianism Unjust There Comes A Time Libertarian Party

Book:The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr

Source: The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr

“Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.”

“Of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important. This sense, as Mackintosh remarks, "has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action"; it is summed up in that short but imperious word "ought," so full of high significance. It is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow-creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause.”

“I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.”

Men Important Differences Animal Moral Ethics Conscience Noble Judgement Attributes

Author:Charles Darwin

“Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience.”

Source: Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies

“Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.”

Source: The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“You can t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?”

Source: Lord Jim (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): A Classic Novel of Guilt and Atonement From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Secret Agent & Under Western Eyes (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)

“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?”

Mind Persons Happens Nations Black Accepting Moral Baby Conscience Abortion Genocide Fabric

Author:Jesse Jackson

“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.”

Men Firsts Country Moral Conscience Betrayal Betray Betrayed Sweetheart Being Betrayed Friend Betrayal Betraying Friends

Book:Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)

Source: Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

“He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.”

Years Sometimes Individual Justice Moral Rights Republican Conscience Built Court Protection Reputation Fierce Lifelong Individual Rights Moral Conscience

Author:Judy Woodruff

“God has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own.”

Way May Values Fall Acting Moral Rights Conscience Honestly Agents Cherish

Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Published by Order of Congress from the Original Manuscripts Deposited in the Department of State

Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Published by Order of Congress from the Original Manuscripts Deposited in the Department of State

“Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.”

“Honor is the moral conscience of the great.”

Moral Honor Conscience Army Moral Conscience

Author:William Davenant

“Market forces have no intrinsically moral direction, which is why, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ethics should precede economics. But it doesn't have to. . . . We know this because we've seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; the endangerment of workers; and the sale of dangerous products - from cars to toys to drugs. All in pursuit of ever-greater profits.”

“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”

“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

“An individual can be truly moral only when they are their own master. From the moment when they awaken to a comprehension of that which is equitable and good it is for them to direct their own movements, to seek in the their conscience reasons for their actions, and to perform them simply, without either fearing punishment or looking for reward.”

Reason Moments Action Individual Moral Movement Masters Conscience Direct Rewards Punishment Comprehension Equitable

Author:Elisee Reclus

“The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.”

Knows Whole Wisdom Reality Law Prayer Perfect Moral Written Divine Conscience Function Unions Perceive Concrete Enlightening Divine Law

Book:No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

“A society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.”

Men Doe Bigs Values Term Levels Deals Moral Middle Produce Higher Succeed Smart Conscience Absolutes Blessed Vices Circles Chiefs Planes Cynical Racket Shady Operators Raising Money

Author:C. Wright Mills

“How many young girls there are who do not see any wrongdoing in following certain shameless styles like so many sheep. They certainly would blush if they could guess the impression they make and the feelings they evoke in those who see them. Do they not see the harm resulting from excess in certain gymnastic exercises and sports not suitable for virtuous girls? What sins are committed or provoked by conversations which are too free, by immodest shows, by dangerous reading. How lax have consciences become, how pagan morals!”

“Those individuals who give moral considerations a much greater weight than considerations of expediency represent a comparatively small minority, five percent of the people perhaps. But, In spite of their numerical inferiority, they play a major role in our society because theirs is the voice of the conscience of society.”

People Giving Play Science Individual Voice Moral Roles Five Greater Majors Percent Conscience Weight Spite Consideration Minorities Our Society Inferiority Expediency

Author:Leo Szilard

“Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience.”

People Has Beens Made Loss Moral Materials Conscience Labor Burning Scar

Author:Hjalmar Schacht

“If we continue to make moral judgements (and whatever we say shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of nature.”

Ifs Men Believe Facts Moral Products Conscience Miracle Judgement Moral Judgement

Author:C. S. Lewis

“Think in the name of Almighty God. We must first have a worldwide awakening of the public conscience, a spiritual revival, a moral regeneration, before there can be permanent peace and real economic recovery. To this end we do not need new laws, but a new spirit; we do not need a change of government, but a change of the human heart. There can be no peace, there will be no recovery without it. Therefore, with a change of heart, let's all make a new start.”

“We (atheists) act in good conscience because we believe in moral principles, not because we expect a reward in Heaven.”

Believe Heaven Moral Principles Conscience Rewards Atheist Moral Principles Rewards In Heaven

Author:Margherita Hack