This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When The conscience is ... A brake, not a guide; a fence, not a way. It raises its voice after a wrong deed has been committed, but often fails to give us direction in advance of our actions.
Conscience | Wrong |
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... that would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Anarchy | Conscience | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Law | Order | Reality | Respect | Sense | Respect |
The existential concept of guilt adds something even more important than the broadening of the scope of "accountability." Most simply put: one is guilty not only through transgressions against another or against some moral or social code, but one may be guilty of transgression against oneself.
A conscience which has been bought once will be bought twice.
Conscience | Will |
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fully Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Conscience | Humanity | Justice |
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow-men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience and revelation.
Conscience | Duty | God | Men | Reason | Respect | Revelation | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |
Parties like only men who wear blinders and have committed a section of their conscience to their chief.
Conscience | Men |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Conscience | Cruelty | Good | Hell | Cruelty |
The only God whom our thoughts can rest on, our hearts cling to, and our conscience can recognize, is the God whose image dwells in our own souls.
Conscience | God | Rest | God |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one’s best; to keep the brain and conscience clear; never to be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved and then do one’s duty.
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
Guilt | Righteousness | Self | Self-righteousness |