This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Laura Schlesinger, fully Laura Catherine Schlessinger, aka Dr. Laura
There is, I believe, no such thing as unconditional self-acceptance. Those who say so are promulgating a pernicious lie. One must first live a decent, honorable and productive life. Only then do you get to feel good about yourself. Seeking to heedlessly gratify your desires or impulses of the moment to do things (or fail to do things) your conscience knows to be contrary to your standards of right, worthy and virtuous behavior is, in a mental, emotional and spiritual sense, akin to spending capital that you have not earned, and therefore will eventually cause you to feel very negatively … about who and what you are. You cannot in the long run have your cake and eat it too. The longer … you behave in certain ways, the more it comes to define you, not only to others, but also to yourself.
Behavior | Cause | Conscience | Good | Will |
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Property, not conscience, is the basis of liberty. For the defence of conscience need not arise. Property is always exposed to interference. It is the constant object of policy.
Conscience | Need | Object | Property |
Religion is man's way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat. That it is not an inevitable defeat is a claim that cannot be defended in good faith. One can, of course, disperse one's life over the contingencies of every day, but even then it is only a ceaseless and desperate desire to live, and finally a regret that one has not lived. One can accept life, and accept it, at the same time, as a defeat only if one accepts that there is a sense beyond that which is inherent in human history -- if, in other words, one accepts the order of the sacred. A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings , and are therefore contemptible. Everything is contemptible, and there is no more to be said. The conscience liberated from the sacred knows this, even if it conceals it from itself.
Choice | Conscience | Defeat | Desire | Good | History | Inevitable | Life | Life | Order | Regret | Sacred | Sense | World |
Lillian Hellman, fully Lillian Florience "Lily" Hellman
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion.
Conscience | Will |
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Conscience | Good | People |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
Business | Conscience | Heart | Little | Love | Principles | Smile | Strength | Will | Business |
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Conscience | Mistake |
Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.
Character | Conduct | Conscience | Enthusiasm | Good | Honor |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming -- in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you -- means a loss of opportunity for some other task.
Fidelity | Life | Life | Means | Opportunity | Waste | Wonder | Loss |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
To live according to nature is the highest good; that is, to lead a life regulated by conscience and conformed to virtue and temperance.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.
Age | Comfort | Conscience | Good | Life | Life | Old age | Past | Practice | Will | Witness | Old |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world.
Amusements | Conscience | Discipline | Good | Manners | Nothing |
A man who sells his conscience for his interest, will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country, will betray his friend.
Conscience | Man | Will |
Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.
Conscience | Cowardice | Fear | Position | Resolution | Surrender | Time |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
I can cast out the wrong idea of fidelity and understand that in the end one cannot be faithful in the true life-giving sense if it means being unfaithful to oneself.
Fidelity | Means | Sense | Wrong | Understand |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
We must, however, not deceive ourselves – this naive belief does not exist nowadays even among common people, and it cannot be revived by backwards oriented (rückwärts gerichtete) considerations and measures. Since to believe means to consider something true (fürwahrhalten), and the growing knowledge of the nature, proceeding forwards incessantly along incontestably reliable path, had led to the result that for a man educated at least slightly in natural sciences it is entirely (schlechterdings) impossible to consider as reliable many reports about extraordinary events contradicting natural laws, about miracles (Naturwunder) which used to be generally accepted as essential support and confirmation (Bekräftigung) of religious teachings and which people considered formerly as facts without critical examination (Bedenken). The one who takes his religion really seriously and cannot tolerate that it gets into contradiction with his knowledge (Wissen), is facing the question of conscience whether he can still honestly consider himself to be a member of religious community which in its confession (Bekenntnis) contains belief in miracles. For a certain period of time many a believer could find a kind of reconciliation in an effort to take the middle way and to restrict his belief to acceptance (Anerkennung) of few miracles, considered to be extremely important. However, such a position is not tenable for a long time. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely (zu Ende gehen muss).
Acceptance | Belief | Conscience | Contradiction | Doubt | Effort | Events | Knowledge | Man | Means | Miracles | People | Position | Question | Reconciliation | Religion | Science | Time |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
God has come again and again in various Forms, has spoken again and again in different words and different languages the Same One Truth — but how many are there that live up to it? Instead of making Truth the vitalbreath of his life, man compromises by making over and over againa mechanical religion of it—a handy staff to lean on in times of adversity, a soothing balm for his conscience or a tradition to be followed.