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Conscience Quotes

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Conscience Quotes

“Our diplomacy ended up giving a bad conscience to an international community capable only of expressing noble sentiments while doing nothing, .. So how can one explain that we are today investigating an action our country should be proud of?.”

Giving Should Country Today Action Community Proud Capable Conscience International Noble Our Country Sentiments Be Proud Diplomacy Doing Nothing International Community Investigating

Author:Alain Juppe

“Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.”

Wells Persons Doe Different Seems Action Loses Acting Moral Focus Authority Standards Expectations Conscience Concern Being True Acquire Consideration Sentiments

Author:Stanley Milgram

“God, in His wrath, has not left this world to the mercy of the subtlest dialectician; and all arguments are happily transitory in their effect when they contradict the primal intuitions of conscience and the inborn sentiments of the heart.”

World Heart Left Effects This World Conscience Argument Mercy Intuition Sentiments Wrath Primal Transitory

Author:Edwin Percy Whipple

“It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship.”

Source: The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections

“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.”

Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private

“It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.”

Persons Ideas Law Liberty Rights Economic Conscience Economics Absolutes Property Missions Secure Enjoyment Injury Sentiments Interfere Legislators Absolute Power

Book:The Law

Source: The Law

“I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities.”

Heart Fear Atheism Judgment Conscience Rage Sentiments Animosity

Book:A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography

Source: A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography

“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

“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.”

“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.”

Ifs Firsts States America Religious Christianity Rights Ought Worship Conscience Universal Constitution Encouragement Consideration Sentiments Amendments Adoption First Amendment

Author:Joseph Story

“There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual”

Self Life Is Conscience Sensual Delusion Sentiments Lofty Dreamy Reverie Self Delusion Groveling

Book:Among my Books: Contents: Dryden. Witchcraft. Shakespeare once more. New England two centuries ago. Lessing. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

Source: Among my Books: Contents: Dryden. Witchcraft. Shakespeare once more. New England two centuries ago. Lessing. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists