Great Throughts Treasury

"A good conscience enlists a multitude of friends; a bad conscience is distressed and anxious, even when alone." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"Conscience warns us as a friend before it punishes as a judge." -

"[Neurosis] is the disease of a bad conscience." -

"Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything." -

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me." - Charles William Stubbs

"Conscience is God’s presence in man." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"A university must have a social conscience." - Desmond Tutu, fully Desmond Mpilo Tutu

"Article 1 – All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." - United Nations NULL

"Article 18 - Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." - United Nations NULL

"[Forcing of conscience is] soul-rape." - Roger Williams

"Before crime is committed, conscience must be corrupted." -

"The paradoxical -- and tragic -- situation of man is that his conscience is weakest when he needs it most." -

"In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place." -

"There are seven things that will destroy us: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics." -

"There is a higher court of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts." -

"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." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"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." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What does your conscience say? - You shall become who you are." -

"Conscience is the chamber of justice." - Origen, fully Origenes Adamantius NULL

"A conscience which has been bought once will be bought twice." - Norbert Weiner

"Guilt is thus intimately related to possibility or potentiality. When the "call of conscience" is heard (that is, the call that brings one back to facing one's "authentic" (mode of being), one is always "guilty" and guilty to the extent that one has failed to fulfill authentic possibility." - Irvin David Yalom

"We lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes." -

"We lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes." -

"We lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes." -

"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." - 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." -

"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." - Archibald Alexander

"Parties like only men who wear blinders and have committed a section of their conscience to their chief." - Arsène Darmesteter

"The sin of racial pride still represents the most basic challenge to the American conscience. We cannot dodge this challenge without renouncing our highest moral pretentions." - Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger

"The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth." - Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley

"Error always addresses the passions and prejudices; truth scorns such mean intrigue, and only addresses the understanding and the conscience." - Azel Backus

"Conscience without judgment is superstition." - Benjamin Whichcote

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy, mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught." -

"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." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze

"Conscience is an oracle of the Divinity." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." - C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family

"[During dire days under the Nazis] Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he’s called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"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." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower

"The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach of remembrance of an unworthy action." - Edward Gibbon

"The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience." - Edward Gibbon

"Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"A guilty conscience needs no accuser." - English Proverbs

"There is no hell like a troubled conscience." - English Proverbs

"A sensitive conscience is often a by-product of a decline of vigor." - Eric Hoffer

"The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt." - Eric Hoffer

"The fact that human conscience remains partially infantile throughout life is the core of human tragedy." -

"No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform." -

"No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution Forces each one, against his conscience, To conform." -

"Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR