Quotes about Conscience

But who, except God, can say whether a man is right or foolish if he follows the call of his conscience?

~ Sayyid Ahmad al-Sanusi, Quoted by Muhammad Asad in The Road To Mecca

“There are three forces, the only three forces capable of conquering and enslaving forever the conscience of these weak rebels in the interests of their own happiness. They are: the miracle, the mystery and authority.”

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms.  If a system injures the intelligence it is bad.  If it injures the character it is vicious.  If it injures the conscience it is criminal.

Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass.  The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities -- what we do with, and how we manage our time.  The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction -- what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.  In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of "time management."

[Albert] Gorres shows that the feeling of guilt, the capacity to recognize guilt, belongs essentially to the spiritual make-up of man. This feeling of guilt disturbs the false calm of conscience and could be called conscience's complaint against my self-satisfied existence. It is as necessary for man as the physical pain that signifies disturbances of normal bodily functioning. Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill, "a living corpse, a dramatic character's mask," as Gorres says:
"Monsters, among other brutes, are the ones without guilt feelings. Perhaps Hitler did not have any, or Himmler, or Stalin. Maybe Mafia bosses do not have any guilt feelings either, or maybe their remains are just well hidden in the cellar. Even aborted guilt feelings...All men need guilt feelings."

You don't have a soul.
You ARE a Soul.
You have a body.

There is no spoon.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home --first for six years, then for 19 months. How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity--our conscience.

In late modernity we grow more and more accustomed to politicians and public figures who are indebted to their appetites for their "values," to their intellectual sloth for their "principles," to their rhetorical cleverness for their "conscience," and to their regimented conformism for their "philosophy."

Perhaps the most important point is to ensure that science never becomes divorced from the basic human feeling of empathy with our fellow beings. Just as one's fingers can function only in relation to the palm, so scientists must remain aware of their connection to society at large. Science is vitally important, but it is only one finger of the hand of humanity, and its greatest potential can be actualized only so long as we are careful to remember this. Oherwise, we risk losing our sense of priorities. Humanity may end up serving the interests of scientific progress rather than the other way around. Science and technology are powerful tools, but we must decide how best to use them. What matters above all is the motivation that governs the use of science and technology, in which ideally heart and mind are united.

Within the short space of my own lifetime, the impact of science and technology on humanity has been tremendous. Although my own interest in science began with curiosity about a world, foreign to me at that time, governed by technology, it was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity as a whole dawned on me---especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology. Yet are we clear about the place of science in the totality of human life---what exactly it should do and by what it should be goverened? This last point is critical because unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit. They may indeed cause great harm.

A heart needs only its own voice to do what is right.

The person who loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.

Mind & Conscience.

Mind is the Soul speaking and Conscience is the Spirit speaking.

"You know why you are doing something. And if it is against your life, your principles and ideals it is bothersome. And no one wants to be bothered. So you conveniently try to curtain it off, turn a blind eye, and put it out of sight so that it won't bother you. This is what the Mind does."

Cowardice askes the question:"Is it safe"? Expediency asks the question:"Is it politic"? Vanity asks the question:"Is it popular?"But conscience asks the question:"Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one what is right.

A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience--never empty--the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.

I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It destroys communities and makes humanity impossible. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers... In winning our freedom, we will so appeal to you heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.

Auto-ravissement

La conscience elle-même n'a pas besoin d'affirmation externe; elle est toujours déjà parfaitement accomplie et complète. Mais elle veut se connaître. Elle est perpétuellement à la recherche d'elle-même, et quand elle se trouve, elle est toujours affirmée dans la découverte d'elle-même. Tout ce que la conscience veut faire, c'est se ravir d'elle-même, pour toujours, absorbée sans fin par elle-même. Il semble que la vraie nature du soi, au niveau le plus profond, soit l'auto-ravissement.

Si vous portez votre attention sur le fond vide de votre expérience de la conscience, vous verrez par vous-même que l'auto-ravissement est sa nature. La conscience n'est pas un objet ; la conscience est le sujet et le sujet médite en permanence sur lui-même. Quand vous avez localisé cette pure subjectivité et cultivé assez de concentration pour être éveillé à ses qualités, vous découvrirez, en fait, qu'il y a quelque chose de mystérieux et d'infiniment attractif au plus profond de la conscience elle-même. Chaque fois que vous redécouvrirez ce fond sans fond, que ce soit après cinq minutes ou cinq ans, vous trouverez que, miraculeusement, c'est toujours nouveau.

  One pang of conscience is worth more than many lashes.

"Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. "

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

When you study the lives of all great achievers--those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made things happen--you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggle, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of these four intelligences are: for mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice.

Only in a thoroughly unrelated world can we poison nature without conscience, neglect our children and the poor, and righteously slay thousands of enemy soldiers because we don't have the patience or imagination for negotiation.

When you engage in a work that taps your talent and fuels your passion--that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet--therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.

Tolstoy said the two greatest misfortunes in life were bad health and a bad conscience.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience.