Great Throughts Treasury

"The author who penetrates the deepest into the human soul is the one who has the strongest respect for the awakening power of conscience and the stretching power of commitment." - Norman Cousins

"Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his own conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life." - Norman Cousins

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." - Ogden Nash

"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." -

"Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." -

"He that hath a blind conscience which sees nothing, a dead conscience which feels nothing, and a dumb conscience which says nothing, is in as miserable a condition as a man can be on this side of hell." - Patrick Henry

"If our own conscience protests and refuses to accept praise then it is proof against the flatterer. " - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"All too often a clear conscience is merely the result of a bad memory." -

"Consult your conscience, rather than public opinion." -

"Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government." - Ralph Nader

"The truth, the hope, of any time must be sought in the minorities. Michael Angelo was the conscience of Italy. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now, but in his own day his friends were few." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation – to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Most men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are must luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A person may sometimes have a clear conscience simply because his head is empty." - Ralph Washington Sockman

"The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the conscience, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind." -

"Be fearful only of thyself, and stand in awe of none, more than of thine own conscience... And he that reverences this judge will seldom do anything he need repent of." - Robert Burton

"A good conscience is a continual feast." - Robert Burton

"What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all." - Robert Burton

"It is the conscience alone which is a thousand witnesses to accuse us." - Robert Burton

"Conscience doesn’t determine what we ought to do, it only reminds us of rules we have already accepted." - Robert C. Solomon

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"The person of integrity is a continuous person, for whom the present is a point on a line drawn out of memory and into the willed future, rather than an unpredicted and unwieldy configuration which seems to operate under its own law. The person of integrity is no superman; he will be, from time to time, defeated, frustrated, embarrassed and completely surprised. but neither is he the common and regular dupe of circumstance, compelled (like some tourist with a pocket dictionary) to consult conscience and emotion at each new turn of events." - Robert Grudin

"A man never outlives his conscience, and that, for this cause only, he cannot outlive himself." -

"Guilt upon conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal." -

"Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council chamber of thought." - Saint Basil, aka Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great NULL

"Honor is the moral conscience of the great." - William Davenant, fully Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant

"To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

"There is no witness so terrible - no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us." - Sophocles NULL

"Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Happy is the man who renounces everything which may bring a stain or burden upon his conscience." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"He will easily be content and at peace, whose conscience is pure." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"The glory of a good man is the witness of a good conscience." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"The joy of a good man is the witness of a good conscience; have a good conscience and thou shalt ever have gladness." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage." - Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey

"Conscience can’t be compelled." - Thomas Fuller

"A good Conscience is the best Divinity." - Thomas Fuller

"A guilty conscience is like a whirlpool, drawing in all to itself which would otherwise pass by." - Thomas Fuller

"A guilty Conscience never thinketh it self safe." - Thomas Fuller

"A tender conscience is a stronger obligation than a prison." - Thomas Fuller

"A wounded conscience is often inflicted as a punishment for lack of true repentance; great is the difference betwixt a man’s being frightened at and humbled for his sins." - Thomas Fuller

"Be fearful only of thyself; and stand in awe of none more than thine own conscience." - Thomas Fuller

"Conscience can't be compelled." - Thomas Fuller

"Custom is generally too hard for Conscience. Custom is the Guide of the Ignorant. Custom without Reason, is but an ancient Error." - Thomas Fuller

"Debt is an evil conscience." - Thomas Fuller

"He that has no Shame, has no Conscience." - Thomas Fuller

"Wealth and Honours can never cure a wounded Conscience." - Thomas Fuller

"Public opinion is a second conscience." - William Rounseville Alger

"A peace above all earthly dignities, A still and quiet conscience. The Life of King Henry the Eighth (Wolsey at III, ii)" - William Shakespeare

"Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." - William Shakespeare