118 Inspiring Conscience Quotes

In a world where decisions and actions often shape our path and impact those around us, the voice of conscience serves as an invaluable guide. It is the inner compass that steers us towards empathy, morality, and integrity. Drawing from the wisdom of thinkers, leaders, and philosophers throughout history, conscience quotes have the power to inspire, motivate, and provoke reflection. Here, we present a curated collection of 118 enlightening quotes that delve into the depths of human conscience, encouraging you to pause, reflect, and perhaps view the world from a more empathetic and just perspective. Let these words ignite your inner light and navigate your journey with consciousness and clarity.

1. “If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” - Charlotte Brontë

2. “Science without conscience is the soul's perdition.” - Francois Rabelais

3. “Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.” - Jim Carroll

4. “[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.” - Bertrand Russell

5. “The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.” - Frederick Lewis Donaldson

6. “A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.” - Mark Twain

7. “Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.” - Tom Hodgkinson

8. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

9. “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.” - Mahatma Gandhi

10. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” - John Milton

11. “It is neither right nor safe to go against my conscience.” - Martin Luther

12. “That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

13. “The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another?” - Jon Katz

14. “Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.” - Joyce Meyer

15. “A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.” - George Bernard Shaw

16. “Congratulations. You have met your conscience. In my experience, the world is divided between those who have one and those who don't. And the ones with one are divided into those who will act on their conscience and those who won't. Those who will are, I'm afraid, the smallest category. They will *jeito*. It's Brazilian Portuguese. It means to find a way to get something done, no matter what the obstacles.” - Jean Ferris

17. “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” - Leo Tolstoy

18. “Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.” - George Eliot

19. “Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l'avons pas encore assassinée.” - Honoré de Balzac

20. “Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.” - Evan Esar

21. “Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.” - Oscar Wilde

22. “Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen."(Reply to the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521)” - Martin Luther

23. “Does changing for the better absolve you of all the wicked shit you did before?No. March fills my head like a warm glow. Instead you receive the twin delights of guilt and regret.” - Ann Aguirre

24. “An educator should consider that he has failed in his job if he has not succeeded in instilling some trace of a divine dissatisfaction with our miserable social environment. ” - Anthony Standen

25. “Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . it transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are.A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.” - Terry Tempest Williams

26. “It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.” - Henry David Thoreau

27. “Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.Listen to it carefully.” - Richard Bach

28. “We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.” - Michel de Montaigne

29. “Une civilisation sans la Science, ce serait aussi absurde qu'un poisson sans bicyclette.” - Pierre Desproges

30. “Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ” - Carl Gustav Jung

31. “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.” - John Henry Newman

32. “The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.” - John Calvin

33. “The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.” - Gaylord Nelson

34. “Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.” - Louise Penny

35. “The highest court is in the end one’s own conscience and conviction—that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist—and before any science there is first of all belief.” - Max Planck

36. “Only those with a conscience can find an action unconscionable.” - F.D. Crandall

37. “Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Saviour 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...?” - St. Athanasius

38. “Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.” - Anna Godbersen

39. “The bite of conscience is indecent.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

40. “All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.” - Rick Riordan

41. “There is no conscience in a real war.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

42. “I'm not so fond of people myself, Evvy, but I took my vows for a reason. There are two classes of people in the world, the destroyers and the builders. I want to build, not destroy. You need to ask yourself who you're going to be.” - Tamora Pierce

43. “Between the radiant white of a clear conscience and the coal black of a conscience sullied by sin lie many shades of gray--where most of us live our lives. Not perfect but not beyond redemption.” - Sherry L. Hoppe

44. “How pitiful is an intelligence used only to make excuses to quieten the conscience.” - Ignazio Silone

45. “I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.” - David Sedaris

46. “Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.” - Peter Kreeft

47. “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” - Mahatma Gandhi

48. “You govern people, you do good and bad things.If you don't have guts to do bad, then step aside.” - Toba Beta

49. “I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

50. “There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.” - Polybius

51. “Conscience defined by the elders,passed on to the next generations.” - Toba Beta

52. “Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

53. “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.” - Robert E. Lee

54. “In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.” - Viktor E. Frankl

55. “Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?"The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court.""And why is that?""Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience—only much more convincingly.” - Jim Butcher

56. “When spontaneous demoralizing thoughts seep into your conscience, don't trip...allowing them to fester. These are random tests of your conviction and determination. Large or small, your reaction to such intrusions is a defining moment for which no one else, but you, can mitigate.” - T.F. Hodge

57. “The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them. Alcohol gave us the false courage to do it and numbed our conscience as we did. Alcohol was the great enabler, and the great anesthetic. It wasn’t God who was dead. We were. – p. 116” - Ray A

58. “It's a sin only if conscience confirmed it.” - Toba Beta

59. “Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.” - Criss Jami

60. “Atticus, you must be wrong." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . ." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.” - Harper Lee

61. “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

62. “Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may—until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can. Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good. Or until I'm hauled before somebody that can make me talk.” - Raymond Chandler

63. “A good conscience is eight parts of courage.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

64. “No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.” - Stefan Zweig

65. “This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain't normal.” - Joel Salatin

66. “Man has a tyrant, ignorance. I voted for the demise of that particular tyrant. That particular tyrant has engendered royalty, which is authority based on falsehood, whereas science is authority based on truth. Man should be governed by science alone.""And conscience," added the bishop. "It's the same thing. Conscience is the quota of innate science we each have inside us.” - Victor Hugo

67. “I hate what you represent."... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.” - Jim Butcher

68. “I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last.” - Charlotte Brontë

69. “A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

70. “True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?” - Walter Van Tilburg Clark

71. “The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.” - Barack Obama

72. “Don't question your conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions.” - Henry James

73. “Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.” - W. Somerset Maugham

74. “The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time. ... quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits – quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place. ... The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.” - Victor J. Stenger

75. “I couldn't begin to tell you what terrible trigger for such insanity lies deep in my sub-conscious. Though no doubt some would say that, indeed, it may be some demon of conscience. A deeply buried guilt for some unforgivable depravity. Then again, perhaps not.” - Angel Rosa

76. “Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don't have a conscience. I say them.” - Jeff Lindsay

77. “Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.” - Thomas Merton

78. “Perhaps conscience did not always produce cowards. Sometimes it made a man feel better about himself.” - Robert Ludlum

79. “There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

80. “That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear?” - Kristin Cashore

81. “All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.” - Donald Miller

82. “A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

83. “RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.” - Robert Bolt

84. “... what you think is right isn't the same as knowing what is right.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

85. “Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.” - Walter Scott

86. “No," said Father. "Just do the best you can and don't let it worry you. In that way you'll have a clear conscience and a tranquil heart.” - Carol Ryrie Brink

87. “What pillow can one have like a good conscience?” - John Steinbeck

88. “I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.” - Octavia E. Butler

89. “I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.” - Octavia E. Butler

90. “I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.” - Edmond Rostand

91. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” - Henry David Thoreau

92. “The root of liberalism, in a word, is hatred of compulsion, for liberalism has the respect for the individual and his conscience and reason which the employment of coercion necessarily destroys. The liberal has faith in the individual – faith that he can be persuaded by rational means to beliefs compatible with social good.” - Harold Edmund Stearns

93. “The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.” - Leo Tolstoy

94. “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

95. “It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.” - John Henry Newman

96. “Whenever the conviction of God’s Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey; but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God.” - Oswald Chambers

97. “Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.” - Criss Jami

98. “يا للإنسان! أيذبح في ذاكرته ذكريات لا يقوى على احتمالها؟ كنت أحسب أن فاقدي الضمير تتحجّر قلوبهم، فلا يشعرون بتأنيبه. فإذا الأمر مختلف. وإذا الإنسان أعجز من أن يقتل ضميره، فيقتل الذاكرة!” - إميل حبيبي

99. “I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.” - Oscar Wilde

100. “You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.” - Philip Roth

101. “Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep - but an intruder came, now, that would not "down". It was conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came [...] So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.” - Mark Twain

102. “Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.” - Nick Hornby

103. “In case you’re not bright enough to figure it out, there’s a real upside to having a sinner like me answer your phone. I lie, and your conscience stays clear.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

104. “Major, I do not know why God does the things He does, but I believe you have the same duty to God as you have always had: to follow the right path, to live your life with a clear conscience.” - Jeff Shaara

105. “Gamache watched the old poet. He knew what was looming behind the Mountain. What crushed all before it. The thing the Hermit most feared. The Mountain most feared.Conscience....Which is why, Gamache knew, it was vital to be aware of actions in the present. Because the present became the past, and the past grew. And got up, and followed you.And found you ...Who wouldn't be afraid of this?” - Louise Penny

106. “Inquisitor Lorsen's thin lip curled. "There is truly nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish."Cosca's face hardened as he leaned forwards. "Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it - there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.” - Joe Abercrombie

107. “To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.” - Susan Sontag

108. “...freedom of conscience does not mean being uncontrolled - we have to control ourselves and at times submit to others...” - John Geddes

109. “É bom quando nossa consciência sofre grandes ferimentos, pois isso a torna mais sensível a cada estímulo. Penso que devemos ler apenas livros que nos ferem, que nos afligem. Se o livro que estamos lendo não nos desperta como um soco no crânio, por que perder tempo lendo-o? Para que ele nos torne felizes, como você diz? Oh Deus, nós seríamos felizes do mesmo modo se esses livros não existissem. Livros que nos fazem felizes poderíamos escrever nós mesmos num piscar de olhos. Precisamos de livros que nos atinjam como a mais dolorosa desventura, que nos assolem profundamente – como a morte de alguém que amávamos mais do que a nós mesmos –, que nos façam sentir que fomos banidos para o ermo, para longe de qualquer presença humana – como um suicídio. Um livro deve ser um machado para o mar congelado que há dentro de nós” - Franz Kafka

110. “We must hide our integrity, like we hide our love.” - UR Ananthamurthy

111. “Dabei wissen wir doch:Auch der Hass gegen die NiedrigkeitVerzerrt die Züge.Auch der Zorn über das UnrechtMacht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wirDie wir den Boden bereiten wollten für FreundlichkeitKonnten selber nicht freundlich sein.” - Bertolt Brecht

112. “You can pray and fight at the same time, Corporal. Especially if you learn how before things get rough. It’s important to have a philosophy of life . . . and of death.” - Henry V. O'Neil

113. “Conscience, Christ, and the gift of faith make evil men uneasy in their sin. They feel that if they could drive Christ from the earth, they would be free from "moral inhibitions." They forget that it is their own nature and conscience which makes them feel that way. Being unable to drive God from the heavens, they would drive his ambassadors from the earth. In a lesser sphere, that is why many men sneer at virtue--because it makes vice uncomfortable.” - Fulton J. Sheen

114. “A marching army first crushes the flowers before the enemy; but even before this, it crushes its own conscience! Conscience and killing cannot be together!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

115. “I cannot kill someone, he thought.” - Lois Lowry

116. “He shrugged, "...my conscience rests easiest if I do only what I see as best in the moment...” - Anihyr Moonstar

117. “What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

118. “A standing prick hath no conscience. And if that standing prick is attached to Bruce Robertson then it hath less than no conscience. You can't afford a conscience in this life, that has become a luxury for the rich and a social ball and chain for the rest of us. Even if I wanted one, which I certainly do not, I wouldn't have the faintest idea as how to go about getting one.” - Irvine Welsh