This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"When we speak of conscience, it may easily be thought that in virtue of its form, which is abstract inwardness, conscience is at this point without more ado true conscience. But true conscience determines itself to will what is absolutely good and obligatory and is this self-determination." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Alcohol produces artificial happiness, artificial courage, artificial gaiety, artificial self-satisfaction, thus making life bearable for millions who would otherwise be unable to endure their condition. To them alcohol is a blessing. Unfortunately, as it acts by destroying conscience, self-control, and the normal functioning of the body, it produces crime, disease and degradation." - George Bernard Shaw
"Labor to keep alive that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience." - George Washington
"A good conscience makes a good pillow." - German Proverbs
"What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Conscience is the frame of character, and love is the covering for it." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Every one has conscience enough to hate; few have religion enough to love." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has sent in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good in its placed as conscience or veneration. Praying can o more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Conscience is the frame of character." - Henry Ward Beecher
"God never ordained you to have a conscience for others. Your conscience is for you, and for you alone." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Love it is – not conscience – that is God’s regent in the human soul, because it can govern the soul as nothing else can." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own conscience." - Henry Ward Beecher
"All our possessions are as nothing compared to health, strength, and a clear conscience." - Hosea Ballou
"Be more careful of your conscience than of your estate. The latter can be bought and sold; the former never." - Hosea Ballou
"If we are at peace with God and our own conscience, what enemy among men need we fear?" - Hosea Ballou
"Nonviolence does not mean acceptance, but resistance - not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive. It involves strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, mass demonstrations, and sabotage, as well as appeals to the conscience of the world, even to individuals in the oppressing group who might break away from their past." - Howard Zinn
"Conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally within him." - Immanuel Kant
"Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses." - Immanuel Kant
"Preserve your conscience always soft and sensitive. If but one sin force its way into that tender part of the soul and dwell thee, the road is paved for a thousand iniquities." - Isaac Watts
"The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping." - Izaak Walton
"Conscience in the soul is the root of all true courage. If a man would be brave, let him learn to obey his conscience." - James Freeman Clarke
"Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience." - James Freeman Clarke
"Are you not surprised to find how independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if God be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace." - James Hamilton
"I must leave you to the satisfaction of your own conscience, which, though a silent panegyric, is yet the best." - John Dryden
"Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties." - John Milton
"In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble, and a gravity proceeding from dullness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base." - John Ruskin
"There is a care for trifles which proceeds from love of conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base." - John Ruskin
"It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak conscience." - John Stuart Mill
"It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak conscience. The natural connection is the other way." - John Stuart Mill
"A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us without." - Joseph Addison
"Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident; for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future, and the whole; this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect administration of things." - Joseph Butler
"Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the later to a soul changed for the better." - Joseph Joubert
"Taste is the literary conscience of the soul." - Joseph Joubert
"Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life." - Karl Barth
"The conscience is not automatically infallible; it can easily make mistakes, and it is very difficult to distinguish its voice - the real voice of conscience - from the voice of precipitation, passion, convenience or self-will, or of moral primitiveness." - Karl Rahner
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"The greatest event in natural history was the birth of conscience in the human mind. That was the moment when man put aside his strongest natural instinct, which was self-interest." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"The good life is not only good for one's conscience; it is good for art, good for knowledge, good for health, good for fellowship." - Lewis Mumford
"We believe that humanness consists in what we call conscience, in that courage, if you wish, which we have shown on one single occasion rather than in the cowardice which on many occasions has counseled prudence." - Luigi Pirandello
"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." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"In all one's life one ought not to stray a nail's breadth from the straight path of conscience." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The best audience for the practice of virtue is the approval of one’s own conscience." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"To go against one's conscience is neither safe nor right. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise." - Martin Luther
"Life is seething before your eyes; corner stands collapse, illusions evaporate, truths come tottering like bombs, elements disintegrate demanding new components, new vices destroy the walls of muteness and rise, species amalgamate, forces are set free from their hiding places, and conscience asks its possessor to take a stand; Hold on… escape… live… die… complicate yourself… renew yourself… There is no other way than to wade into the waves of darkness and to swim to the shore of light." - Naguib Mahfouz
"If conscience smite thee once, it is an admonition; if twice, it is a condemnation... What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale." - Nathaniel Hawthorne