Conscience Quotes - Page 18

• Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.

  Alveda King

  Lying, Racism, Faces

  29 Copy quote

• Perhaps, if we don't always have a conscious conscience, we have a subliminal one, from which the memory of past wrongs is not so easily erased.

  Eva Hoffman

  Memories, Past, Conscious

  4 Copy quote

• The hardest thing usually to leave behind, as was the case now, can loosely be called the conscience.

  Norman Maclean

  Cases, Hardest, Behinds

  Norman Maclean, Barry Moser (1989). “A River Runs Through It”, p.59, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

  John Stuart Mill

  Strong, Men, Desire

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.196, Hackett Publishing

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Oneself

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Lady chatterleys lover”, p.151, D. H. Lawrence

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities.

  Naguib Mahfouz

  Circles, People, Minorities

  Naguib Mahfouz (2016). “The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street”, p.1130, Everyman's Library

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rights, Judging

  "Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau".

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously - and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.

  George W. Bush

  War, Taken, Ambition

  "Bush: Islamic Radicalism Doomed to Fail". edition.cnn.com. October 06, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

  Max Beerbohm

  Coward, Non Conformist, Conformist

  Max Beerbohm (2015). “The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm”, p.142, New York Review of Books

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Dark, Grieving

  1851 Twice- Told Tales,'The Haunted Mind'.

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive.

  Roger Williams

  War, Men, Plies

  Roger Williams (1963). “Complete Writings”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let your conscience be your guide.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Guides, Wish Upon A Star, Animated Movies

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.295, A&C Black

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Character, Maturity

  4 Copy quote

• Don’t tell me your name. It’s likely to awaken my conscience, and that’s the last thing we want.

  Julia Quinn

  Names, Want, Lasts

  FaceBook post by Julia Quinn from May 23, 2010

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Smiling away your troubles requires a clear conscience that harbors no insincerity.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Smile, Yoga, Honor

  17 Copy quote

• Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Ignorance, Racism

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.44, Atlantic Books Ltd

  111 Copy quote

  Show source

• The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Doubt, Done, Succeed

  5 Copy quote

• For the longest time, marriage has had a guilty conscience about itself. Should we believe it?--Yes, we should believe it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Marriage, Believe, Guilty Conscience

  6 Copy quote

• Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.

  William Wilberforce

  Men, Joy, Soul

  9 Copy quote

• A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Business, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.121, David M Gross

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Law, Iron

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, second series”, p.124, Harvard University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Integrity, Work, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.238

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch!--The sting of conscience is indecent.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Action, Cowardly, Remorse

  4 Copy quote

• Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Angel, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.718, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Light, Order

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source