This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Conscience | Labor | Understanding |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their action only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it.
Absolute | Action | Conscience | Decision | Men | Right | Society | Society |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed — that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.
Conscience | Heaven | History | Ignorance | Intelligence | Men | Nothing |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
My dignity as a man, my human right which consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity. The materialistic conception of freedom is therefore a very positive, very complex thing, and above all, eminently social, because it can be realized only in society and by the strictest equality and solidarity among all men.
Conformity | Conscience | Convictions | Dignity | Equality | Freedom | Liberty | Right | Society | Society |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals.
Conscience | Individual | Liberty | Reflection | Right |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The materialistic. realistic, and collectivist conception of freedom, as opposed to the idealistic, is this: Man becomes conscious of himself and his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the whole society. He frees himself from the yoke of external nature only by collective and social labor, which alone can transform the earth into an abode favorable to the development of humanity. Without such material emancipation the intellectual and moral emancipation of the individual is impossible. He can emancipate himself from the yoke of his own nature, i.e. subordinate his instincts and the movements of his body to the conscious direction of his mind, the development of which is fostered only by education and training. But education and training are preeminently and exclusively social ... hence the isolated individual cannot possibly become conscious of his freedom. To be free ... means to be acknowledged and treated as such by all his fellowmen. The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals. I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen. Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own.
Action | Body | Character | Conscience | Earth | Education | Freedom | Humanity | Individual | Liberty | Man | Means | Nature | Reflection | Relationship | Respect | Right | Society | Training | Society | Respect |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.
Conscience | Ends |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
O man, no matter what you have studied or how much you have studied, do not follow the ways of your mind with conceit in your learning. Ask a man of wisdom who is on the path and follow his directions. If you do not meet a man of wisdom, lay your heart open and ask even a tree or a wall. The power of God within your heart called conscience will caution you and guide you. It will say, "Go," or "Don't go," "Right," or "Wrong." If your heart is open, your conscience will provide useful fruit which will benefit your journey through life.
Caution | Conscience | God | Heart | Journey | Man | Mind | Power | Will | Wisdom | God |
Chemistry and the Nature of Science and electricity are small. And religion is a science major, which includes all science in the core. No conflict between science and religion, because religion in itself is very science that contains essentially all the sciences. And religion is necessary and required for it is he who draws a small science goals, objectives, and puts her in the sound of its functions under the best of life .. religion is the conscience of residence .. Conscience and in turn chooses Atomic Energy Agency and constructive function .. Not cast out destruction and death on the innocent .. He calls on us to make electricity and lighting means no way to destruction.
Conscience | Death | Energy | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Religion | Science | Sound |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.
Conscience | Power |
In moral lessons the understanding must be addressed before the conscience, and the conscience before the heart, if we would make the deepest impressions.
Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
Confidence | Conscience | Despise | Evolution | Ideas | Important | Law | Position | Science | Will |
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
Verily, virtue must be her own reward, as in the Socratic creed; for she will bring no other dower than peace of conscience in her gift to whosoever weds her. “I have loved justice, and fled from iniquity; wherefore here I die in exile,” said Hildebrand upon his death-bed.
Conscience | Peace | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Smiling away your troubles requires a clear conscience that harbor no insincerity.
Conscience | Troubles |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side; and, since this struggle cannot go on forever, you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economic, social and political.
Conscience | Consecration | Contempt | Day | Law | Mankind | Opposition | Order | Reason | Right | Silence | Struggle | Will | Work | Wrong | Understand |
Let your hands and your conscience Be honest and clean; Scorn to touch or to think of The thing that is mean.
Conscience | Think |
My conscience is mine, my justice is mine, and my freedom is a sovereign freedom.
Conscience | Freedom | Justice |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
The boundary between true and false, and beautiful and ugly, will erode. Conscience will disappear in favor of special interest groups. Force and fraud will become the norm; might will become right, and brutality rampant. It will be a bellum omnium contra omnes, and the family will disintegrate as well. “The home will become a mere overnight parking place.”