This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Be not content with the commonplace 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." - William Jewett Tucker
"A conscience void of offense, before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity." - Daniel Webster
"A good conscience is paradise." - Arminius, also known as Armin or Hermann NULL
"If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it would be about the size of an eight-room house. If a man got possession of all that gold - billions of dollars' worth, he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience, or a sense of eternity." - Charles F. Banning
"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." - Richard Baxter
"Avoid law suits beyond all things; they influence your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Conscience is a great ledger book in which all our offenses are written and registered, and which time reveals to the sense and feeling of the offender." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
"The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul." - John Calvin
"It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great." - William Ellery Channing
"It is not true that there are no enjoyments in the ways of sin; there are, many and various. But the great and radical defect of them all is, that they are transitory and insubstantial, at war with reason and conscience, and always leave a sting behind... They may and often do satisfy us for a moment; but it is death in the end. It is the bread of heaven and the water of life that can so satisfy that we shall hunger no more and thirst no more forever." - Tyron Edwards
"True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience." - Albert Einstein
"How different the peace of god from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness." - Timothy Flint
"There can be revolution only where there is a conscience." - French Student Revolt Graffiti NULL
"Nothing is better than frustration for waking up the conscience." - Henry H. Haskins
"He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him." - William Havard
"Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God." - Benjamin R. Haydon
"Every pupil you have carries in his mind or heart or conscience a bit of you. Your influence, your example, your ideas and values keep marching on - how far into the future and into what realms of our spacious universe you will never know." - Margaret Jenkins
"Everyone should worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience, and not under constraint." - Josephus, fully Titus Flavius Josephus, aka Joseph ben Matthias or Matityahu NULL
"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"As touching corporations, that they were invisible, immortal and that they had no soul, therefor no supoena lieth against them, because they have no conscience or soul." - Roger Manwood, fully Sir Roger Manwood
"More than any other organization in history, the U.N. symbolizes the collective conscience of mankind." - Frederick Mayer
"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom... It may be said with some plausibility that there is an abecedarian (meaning alphabetically or rudimentary) ignorance that comes before knowledge, and another doctoral ignorance that comes after knowledge; ignorance that knowledge creates and engenders, just as it undoes and destroys the first." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Coquetry is love without conscience." - Mathieu Moté
"All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny." - Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
"The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our powers of judgment are more completely exposed by being overpraised than by being unjustly underestimated." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"No man’s spirits were ever hurt by doing his duty; on the contrary, one good action, one temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice of desire or interest, purely for conscience’ sake, will prove a cordial for weak and low spirits, far beyond what either indulgence or diversion or company can do for them." - William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
"Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquire thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee." - Francis Quarles
"Nothing has ever remained of any revolution but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses." - Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, fully Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
"Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only to listen too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body, which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"It is no certain evidence, that because the conscience feels the weight of sin, the heart is humbled on account of it; that because the conscience approves of the rectitude of the Divine justice, the heart bows to the Divine sovereignty." - Gardiner Spring
"Did you expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked?" - Lord Edward Thurlow, First Baron
"Mere success is one of the worst arguments in the world of a good cause, and the most improper to satisfy conscience: and yet in the issue it is the most successful of all other arguments, and does in a very odd, but effectual, way, satisfy the consciences of a great many men, by showing them their interest." -
"Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity." - Daniel Webster
"Those even who persecuted Christ or His followers, whom they considered it their duty to persecute, are said to have sinned in action; but they would have committed a graver fault if, contrary to their conscience, they had spared them." - Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
"Nobody can, even for the sake of unity, do violence to his conscience and to truth itself. Whoever in conscience feels obliged to understand the Word of God in a certain way cannot and may not declare he understands it otherwise." - Bernard Johannes Alfrink
"Before crime is committed, conscience must be corrupted." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"No matter! – so long as the world is the work of eternal goodness, and so long as conscience has not deceived us – to give happiness, and to do good, there is our only law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon light, our reason for existing. All religions may crumble away; so long as this survives we have still an ideal, and life is worth living." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the danger." - Henri Frédéric Amiel