“the purifying action of Conscience upsets the legal order.”

“Equality, citizens, is not the whole of society on a level, a society of tall blades of grass and small oaks, or a number of entangled jealousies. It is, legally speaking, every aptitude having the same opportunity for a career; politically all consciences having the same right. Equality has an organ, gratuitous and compulsory education. We must begin with the right to the alphabet.”

“You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience.”

“A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him: this heaven was his conscience.”

“That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience.”

“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.”

“The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing an evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a good man.”