Consciences Quotes

In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others. ~ Benjamin Harrison

The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The world, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice have a clear conscience, he cannot fail to be sustained under his trials, and somehow or other to come right at last; 'in which case,' say they who have hunted him down, ' - though we certainly don't expect it - nobody will be better pleased than we.' Whereas, the world would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering them the less endurable. ~ Charles Dickens

I would like to thank a world that never understood or accepted me, family and friends that never believed in me, and a God with one hell of a sense of humor. You have all made me what I am today. Let that weigh heavily on your consciences. ~ David Draiman

In the land you come from, you call us your conscience. In the land of Oomaldee, they call us innerus. Both consciences and innerus hail from the same species of innerbeings; we've always had a symbiotic relationship with humans. ~ L.R.W. Lee

The proverb has it that Hunger is the best cook. The Law makes afflicted consciences hungry for Christ. Christ tastes good to them. Hungry hearts appreciate Christ. Thirsty souls are what Christ wants. He invites them: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Christ's benefits are so precious that He will dispense them only to those who need them and really desire them. ~ Martin Luther

But we need to realize that there are deeper harvests that happen even when we don't meet with much outward success. We will find our own character changing deeply through ministry. Our consciences will be clear and our hearts happier, since we're less self-indulgent. We'll develop a less selfish and more satisfied character, which will serve us well when we are under pressure. We may not reap quickly, and we may not see all that we reap; but we can know that there is a great harvest for those who sow to please the Spirit. ~ Timothy Keller

Life is a battle, Sasha. All existence is in conflict. We fight the elements, we fight our consciences, we fight the limitations and eventual mortality of our bodies. All things happen by conflict, of one sort or another. ~ Joel Shepherd

You see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again! ... who would have thought we should ever know what it is to be happy! Yet here we are all abroad once more! All at liberty! And may run, if we will, straight forward, from one end of the earth to the other, and back again without being stopped! May fly in the sea, or swim in the sky, or tumble over head and heels into the moon! For remember, my good friends, we have no lead in our consciences to keep us down! ~ Ann Radcliffe

Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education - next, freedom - and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day - in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time - there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it - timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established Anachronism with. ~ Mark Twain

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight,
Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites,
While bad girls slink along in their shame-
Everyone stares at them, everyone blames.
But those bad girls sleep soundly at night,
Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright,
While our good girls toss and they turn-
They lay awake for those who will burn. ~ Anna Godbersen

I'm glad your self-righteousness has given you some exercise, but you forget: we are not such a tidy, reasonable, and humane race. Our thoughts don't stand in grammatical rows, our hearts don't draw equations, our consciences don't have the benefit of historians whispering the answers to us. ~ Josiah Bancroft

Evil societies always kill their consciences. ~ James L. Farmer, Jr.

Let us not speak of tolerance. This negative word implies grudging concessions by smug consciences. Rather, let us speak of mutual understanding and mutual respect. ~ Dominique Pire

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and 'free spirit' and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Be cold, sober, wise, circumspect. Keep yourself low by the ground avoiding high questions. Expound the Law truly and open the veil of Moses to condemn all flesh and prove all men sinners, and set at broach the mercy of our Lord Jesus, and let wounded consciences drink of Him. ~ William Tyndale

I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must. ~ John Lewis

There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

When people were conscious of a God whose character was moral law, when their consciences were informed by a sense of rightness, their watchmen would shout halt when they trespassed the law. Now their watchmen are silent. They serve no king and protect no kingdom. ~ James W. Sire

...But besides the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil Government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded agst in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations.

...Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?

In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.

...Better also to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect ~ James Madison

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Now ministers meet their people in order to enlighten and awaken the consciences of sinners: ~ Jonathan Edwards

The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

We must enter and take possession of the consciences of the children, of the consciences of the young, because they do belong, and should belong to the revolution. ~ Plutarco Elias Calles

Religious freedom certainly means the right to worship God, individually and in community, as our consciences dictate. But religious liberty, by its nature, transcends places of worship and the private sphere of individuals and families. ~ Pope Francis

The United Nations is an uplifting experiment, dedicated to raising the standards of living in Africa , the consciences of democracies, and the price of prostitutes in New York ~ Frank Dane

I know there are some Christians who believe that war and their participation in it are morally wrong. While I respect their views and must allow them to follow their consciences, I do not believe the Bible teaches pacifism. ~ Pat Robertson

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences. ~ Hollace M. Metzger

The whole problem is that the regime is a reflection of society. Crooked and grotesque, but still a reflection. And as long as most of the citizens of a country - if they happened to gain power - would steal and regard themselves as better than other people, no remoralization of the ruling circles will change anything. Those politicians who acquire a conscience will leave. And new ones without consciences will take their places. It's people who have to change, society - ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

I want it to serve as a reminder of the terrible human consequences of Mao's dictatorship and of how good and talented people living under his regime were forced to violate their consciences and sacrifice their ideals in order to survive. ~ Li Zhisui

God sends such purgations to you, directors of consciences, that you may acquire the science of the saints and the art of directing souls. You will suffer also in another way. Love will be your executioner. Let it do its work; it knows how. In this martyrdom we have need of extraordinary grace and strength; but God will bestow it. Without this divine help it would be impossible to bear up. ~ Paul Of The Cross

There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is hate that is not in us, it is outside of man.. We cannot understand it, but we must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard. If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - even our consciences. For this reason, it is everyone duty to reflect on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were "charismatic leaders" ; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the soundness of things they said but from the suggestive way in which they said them, from their eloquence, from their histrionic art, perhaps instinctive, perhaps patiently learned and practised. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. And yet they were acclaimed with hosannas and followed to the death by millions of the faithful. ~ Primo Levi

Bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences touching desertion of the fire-side. ~ Herman Melville

Portentous change when History can appear
As the cool Advocate of foul device;
Reckless audacity extol, and jeer
At consciences perplexed with scruples nice!
They who bewail not, must abhor, the sneer
Born of Conceit, Power's blind Idolater;
Or haply sprung from vaunting Cowardice
Betrayed by mockery of holy fear.
Hath it not long been said the wrath of Man
Works not the righteousness of God? Oh bend, 10
Bend, ye Perverse! to judgments from on High,
Laws that lay under Heaven's perpetual ban
All principles of action that transcend
The sacred limits of humanity. ~ William Wordsworth

There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster, it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the authentic reality that called itself Christianity in the beginning. ~ J.C. Ryle

All of us--bright atheists and committed religionists--need to wake now and hear the earth call . . . . We need to give and receive as love shows us how, join with each pilgrim who quests for the true, give heed to the voices of the suffering, awaken our consciences with justice as our guide, and work toward a planet transformed by our care. ~ Scotty McLennan

While all men within our territories are protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of their consciences; it is rationally to be expected from them in return, that they will [demonstrate] the innocence of their lives and the beneficence of their actions; for no man, who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly be a true Christian, or a credit to his own religious society. ~ George Washington

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children. ~ Mary McCarthy

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it. ~ Ogden Nash

I often remembered also that I had been told, that we shall have as many devils biting us, if we go to hell, as we have unconfessed sins on our consciences. ~ Maria Monk

He was one of those souls destined by God to understand just how little and insignificant they are, even though divine love makes them important to God. But they never have the joy of knowing that they are important. Society will always prevent that. They are just unwanted nuisances pricking the consciences of people who wish they would just disappear. ~ Joseph F. Girzone

Your true homeland is the universe.
Your true goal is to be yourself
Your true love is the love of life.
Your true power is your powerto help.
Your true happiness is to enjoy what you do.
Your true work is to create beauty.
Your true magic is to develop your attention.
Your true social action is to liberate consciences.
Your true discipline is to tame your ego.
Your true truth "The others are also me ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

To give [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] even covert support is on a par with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world, nor on our own consciences. ~ J. William Fulbright

I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity. ~ Robert E.Lee

When we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones. ~ Mark Twain

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections. ~ Charles Baudelaire

The soldier must say Yes when he thinks Yes. But when many say Yes and think No, when they feel forced to say Yes, though they think No, or when they say Yes for the sake of their careers, their own comfort or self-interest while their consciences tell them No, the point has been reached where true soldiering dies out altogether. And not only soldiering. This is death's great triumph. For when conscience dies, mankind dies with it. ~ Hans Hellmut Kirst

We, all of us, must be left alone to make good on our own consciences. And no county magistrate or judge or deacon can separate us from the truth, for they are only men. ~ Kathleen Kent

For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who "believe and tremble" has one. ~ Herman Melville

How long do Syrian families have to live in fear that their children will be killed or tortured, before the Security Council will act? How many people need to die before the consciences of world capitals are stirred? ~ William Hague

I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you."
"And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh.
"I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences."
"And atheists?" He was still laughing.
"They bore me because all they ever talk about is God. ~ Heinrich Boll

I'm tired of these sophistries. I'm tired of these right-wing fuckers. They wouldn't lift a finger themselves. They work contentedly in offices and banks. Yet now they sit pontificating in parliament, in papers, impugning our motives, questioning our judgements. And why? Because they themselves need to feel better by putting down everyone whose work is so much harder than theirs. You only have to say the words 'social worker'…'probation officer' … 'counsellor' … for everyone in this country to sneer. Do you know what social workers do? Every day? They try and clear out society's drains. They clear out the rubbish. They do what no one else is doing, what no one else is willing to do. And for that, oh Christ, do we thank them? No, we take our own rotten consciences, wipe them all over the social worker's face, and say 'if…' FUCK! 'if I did the job, then of course if I did it…oh no, excuse me, I wouldn't do it like that…' Well I say: 'OK, then, fucking do it, journalist. Politician, talk to the addicts. Hold families together. Stop the kids from stealing in the streets. Deal with couples who beat each other up. You fucking try it, why not? Since you're so full of advice. Sure, come and join us. This work is one big casino. By all means. Anyone can play. But there's only one rule. You can't play for nothing. You have to buy some chips to sit at the table. And if you won't pay with your own time…with your own effort…then I'm sorry. Fuck
off! ~ David Hare

The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness. ~ Emile Zola

You can overcome the things that are done to you, but you cannot escape the things that you have done.
Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don't die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but action amounts to identity. We become what we do.You can tell yourself all the stories you want, but you can't leave your actions over there. You can't build a wall and expect to live on the other side of memory. All of the poison seeps back into our soil. ~ Megan K. Stack

Ambitions are incompatible with consciences, you know. The two strangle one another straightaway and leave an awful mess behind them. ~ Jim Butcher

Even if we ourselves are not personally scandalized by the notion of other animals as close relatives, even if our age has accommodated to the idea, the passionate resistance of so many of us, in so many epochs and cultures, and by so many distinguished scholars, must say something important about us. What can we learn about ourselves from an apparent error so widespread, propagated by so many leading philosophers and scientists, both ancient and modern, with such assurance and self-satisfaction?

One of several possible answers: A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them--without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. With untroubled consciences, we can render whole species extinct--for our perceived short-term benefit, or even through simple carelessness. Their loss is of little import: Those beings, we tell ourselves, are not like us. An unbridgeable gap gas thus a practical role to play beyond the mere stroking of human egos. Darwin's formulation of this answer was: "Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals. ~ Carl Sagan

The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic. ~ Gunnar Myrdal

I think Farmer taps into a universal anxiety and also into a fundamental place in some troubled consciences, into what he calls "ambivalence," the often unacknowledged uneasiness that some of the fortunate feel about their place in the world, the thing he once told me he designed his life to avoid. ~ Tracy Kidder

Without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences. ~ Maya Angelou

There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly - You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Gods law has been written on all of our consciences, but only in Christ is it written on our hearts. ~ Alistair Begg

This is the ministry and its work
not to drill hearts and minds and consciences into right forms of thought and mental postures, but to guide to the living God who speaks. ~ Frederick William Robertson

When it all comes down to it, though we may be accused of being coddled and cosseted, our consciences need to be right before God. If that is the case, we have nothing to fear or to apologize for. ~ Jasmine Baucham

Some laborers have hard hands, and old sinners have brawny consciences. ~ Anne Bradstreet

Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences! ~ Inazo Nitobe

Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class. ~ Doris Lessing

Some consciences are fitted with automatic answering machine that work very well. But I never got the technology under control ~ Romain Gary

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters deliver us to laws; they send us bound to rules of reason, holy messengers, pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, bibles laid open, millions of surprises, blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, the sound of glory ringing in our ears: without, our shame; within, our consciences; angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array one cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. ~ George Herbert

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 consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. ~ Robert Andrews Millikan

I do not want to say anything which is too severe because it is not strictly true - let your own consciences speak, but still, I make bold to enquire, - Do not many of you read the Bible m a very hurried way - just a little bit, and off you go? Do you not soon forget what you have read, and lose what little effect it seemed to have? How few of you are resolved to get at its soul, its juice, its life, its essence, and to drink in its meaning. Well, if you do not do that, I tell you again your reading is miserable reading, dead reading, unprofitable reading; it is not reading at all, the name would be misapplied. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Shut up in the prison of their own consciences. ~ James Ussher

We believe in enjoying the constitutional privilege and right of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own consciences. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

But the same receptivity to experience that can make life difficult for the highly sensitive also builds their consciences. Aron tells of one sensitive teen who persuaded his mother to feed a homeless person he'd met in the park, and of another eight-year-old who cried ~ Susan Cain

Conservative evangelicals don't want government support for our faith, because we believe God created all consciences free and a state-coerced act of worship isn't acceptable to God. Moreover, we believe the gospel isn't in need of state endorsement or assistance. Wall Street may need government bailouts but the Damascus Road never does. ~ Russell D. Moore

But most of these women -- the famous and the obscure -- had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it. And all of them helped win a war, even though many of them paid the ultimate price for their contribution. But their sacrifice was not in vain, especially if their courage continues to inspire others to fight injustice and evil wherever they find it.
--From Women Heroes of WWII ~ Kathryn J. Atwood

The civil authority, or that part of it which remained faithful to their trust and true to the ends of the covenant, did, in answer to their consciences, turn out a tyrant, in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honor, and all tyrants in the world look at with fear. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell. ~ Randy Alcorn

In fact, were it given to our human eye to see into the consciences of others, we would judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks. There is will in the thought, there is none in the dream. Even in the gigantic and the ideal, the dream, which is completely spontaneous, takes and keeps the form of our mind. Nothing springs more directly and more sincerely from our innermost souls than our unreflected and indefinite aspirations, much more than in ideas, which are structured, studied, and compared, can we find the true character of each man. Our chimeras are most like us. Each of us dreams the unknown and the impossible according to his own nature. ~ Victor Hugo

Things disturb us in the night. Sometimes they are our consciences. Sometimes they are our secrets. Sometimes they are our fears, translated from one idiom to another. ~ Stacy Schiff

While the law of God is something we intuitively, if partially, know because we are made in his image, in our sinful condition we repress that knowledge and fight against our consciences when they alert us to our own wrongdoing. We need his law more than we need a vague admonition to "love" and "worship. ~ Joe Thorn

And the greatest tragedy of our age is we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another. ~ Vasily Grossman

Slavery was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their consciences. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders. ~ Orestes Brownson

For the secret irony pervading these arguments is that they would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture. ~ David Bentley Hart

Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy? ~ Alfred De Vigny

So finally we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: 'I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because i made you strong enough not to fall in. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Savior is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ? ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

The affair, in short, had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been through and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed - and pitied. ~ Edith Wharton

In this generation, the issue pressing that question on our consciences is the issue of abortion. ~ Robert Casey

Unjust social orders do no fall merely by appeals to the consciences of the oppressor, though such appeals may be an important element; history teaches us that they fall because a large enough number of people organize a movement powerful enough to push them down. Rarely do such revolutions emerge in a neat and morally pristine process. ~ Timothy B. Tyson

Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or the government.

Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators.

Hope does not mean that the nation's ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something.

Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all.

Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with ~ Chris Hedges

But, should the period ever arrive, when luxury and intemperance shall corrupt our towns, while ignorance and vice pervade the country; when the press shall become the common sewer of falsehood and slander; when talents and integrity shall be no recommendation, and open dereliction of all principle no obstacle to preferment; when we shall entrust our liberties to men with whom we should not dare to trust our property; when the chief seats of honor and responsibility in our government shall be filled by characters of whom the most malicious ingenuity can invent nothing worse than the truth; when we shall see the members of our national councils, in defiance of the laws of God and their country, throwing away their lives in defence of reputations, which, if they ever existed, had long been lost; when the slanderers of Washington and the blasphemers of our God shall be thought useful laborers in our political vineyard; when, in fine, we shall see our legislators sacrificing their senses, their reason, their oaths, and their consciences at the altar of party; - then we may say, that virtue has departed, and that the end of our liberty draweth nigh." p37 ~ Edward Payson

The flight from study and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism, we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and our consciences. ~ Joost Meerloo

Corporations aren't people. They have no brains, no consciences, no capacity for intent or guilt. ~ Robert Reich

Selection [of UN delegates] by governments cannot give the peoples of the world the feeling of being fairly and proportionately represented. The moral authority of the UN would be considerable enhanced if the delegates were elected directly by the people. Were they responsible to an electorate, they would have much more freedom to follow their consciences. ~ Albert Einstein

A Christian accepts responsibility whatever his environment. God has not grudged you intelligence
you are capable of answering the question, 'Am I or am I not responsible for my actions?' Therefore, there is no doubt that you are responsible. 'Temptation cannot but enter the world, but woe unto him through whom temptation cometh.' As to your transgression itself, well, many commit similar ones, but go on living in peace with their consciences and even consider such things as inevitable errors of youth. There are also odd men with the smell of the grave already about them who likewise still go on sinning, playfully shrugging off their responsibility and reassuring themselves. The world is full of such horrors. You, at least, have felt the full depth of your transgressions, and that's a very rare occurrence. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

For when God is said by these things to try men and prove them, to see what is in their hearts and whether they will keep His commandments or no, we are not to understand, that it is for His own information, or that He may obtain evidence Himself of their sincerity (for he needs no trials for His information); but chiefly for their conviction, and to exhibit evidence to their consciences ...
So when God tempted or tried Abraham with that difficult command of offering up his son, it was not for His satisfaction, whether he feared God or no, but for Abraham's own greater satisfaction and comfort, and the more clear manifestation of the favour of God to him. ~ Jonathan Edwards