"Let Joy or Ease, let Affluence or Content, And the gay Conscience of a life well spent, Calm ev'ry thought, inspirit ev'ry grace, Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face."

"Some scruple rose, but thus he eas'd his thought, "I'll now give sixpence where I gave a groat; Where once I went to church, I'll now go twice— And am so clear too of all other vice.""

"True, conscious Honour is to feel no sin, He's arm'd without that's innocent within; Be this thy screen, and this thy wall of Brass."

"One self-approving hour whole years outweighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas."

"Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo."

"Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep."

"A cleere conscience is a sure carde."

"Hic murus aeneus esto, Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa."

"Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, Die eine will sich von der andern trennen."

"Oh, Conscience! Conscience! man's most faithful friend, Him canst thou comfort, ease, relieve, defend; But if he will thy friendly checks forego, Thou art, oh! woe for me, his deadliest foe!"

"The Past lives o'er again In its effects, and to the guilty spirit The ever-frowning Present is its image."

"Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din; Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God."

"There is no future pang Can deal that justice on the self condemn'd He deals on his own soul."

"A minority may do for a society what the conscience does for an individual."

"Thus it was not money but conscience that had propelled me on this journey. Conscience, that crabbed and ecclesiastical nag, which inevitably spoke, whether I heeded it or not, in a voice much like my mother’s."

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called Conscience."

"The light of conscience ... enters the eyes of the soul, as the light of the sun enters the eyes of the body; and to open the former requires no greater effort than to open the latter."

"How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself."

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward."

"And I know of the Future Judgment, How dreadful so'er it be, That to sit alone with my Conscience Will be Judgment enough for me."

"While predicting the future is a rare gift, testifying for the truth is a duty for every woman and man of conscience. …A prophet, [Roman Catholic archbishop Óscar] Romero added, is one who has an “undisturbed conscience.” This is an interesting statement. Only those who are firmly rooted in conscience as their moral compass may calmly tell the truth about injustice and corruption, no matter the risks. And risks there are since prophets easily make enemies."

"But what he no longer had was a conscience he could live with."

"As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall."

"要問心無愧，唔係叫你做個乖巧嘅人，而係要繼續做個好人，去阻止錯嘅嘢發生。"

"I am confident that if a man surrenders his conscience to his idea of community, or to his Fuhrer, it doesn't must matter whether he calls himself Communist or Fascist- he has foresworn the element in himself which alone can keep society human. And for want of that element, society must and will inevitably grow more and more barbarous. You can see it happening."

"A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience."

"The conscience exists, standing before us now asking not to be created or perfected but to be chosen and defended, in need of champions, not exiles."

"In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience — why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ... Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle."

"The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man's group behavior... expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command."

"Let his tormentor conscience find him out."

"O Conscience, into what abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driven me, out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged."

"Now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd, wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue!"

"He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon."

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty... in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and 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 he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man."

"The relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience."

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance, nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me."

"God desires the smallest degree of purity of conscience in you more than all the works you can perform."

"In the moral architecture of democracy, no stone is more foundational than the conscience of its citizens."

"Following in the footsteps of the great Protestant theologian H. Richard Niebuhr and his posthumously published book “The Responsible Self” (1963), one of the most well-known (if controversial) contemporary female Catholic theologians, the late Sister Anne E. Patrick, distinguished two ways of looking at conscience, one passive and one creative. The passive conscience, in the words of Sister Patrick, is the internalized habit of “fulfilling the commonly recognized duties on one’s state in life.” As sons, daughters, parents, spouses, citizens, workers, or devotees of a certain religion we have a certain number of duties our society recognizes, and we have internalized the need to fulfill them. Passive conscience is often bad-mouthed but is also necessary. No society or organization can survive without it. However, passive conscience, while necessary, is not sufficient. …Creative conscience alerts us when following the rules and the orders of the authorities, perhaps even following our long-established habits, would lead to injustice, and we should be brave enough to challenge the usual ways and look for something new."

"There are several misunderstandings about conscience. One is that the question of conscience is extremely complicated. As Dr. Hong [Tao-Tze] teaches us, this is basically a lie. A philosophical book about conscience can be very technical and difficult to read for the uninitiated, yet the common experience of conscience is very simple. …As Dr. Hong says, “conscience is innate.” It is within us. For believers, it is the voice of God; for non-believers, it is the voice of our deepest and noblest human nature. But the 19th century ideologues told us that it is a false voice of false gods."

"I believe that Dr. Hong [Tao-Tze, the leader of Tai Ji Men], who has made himself heard about conscience all over the world, will be remembered for having rescued conscience from the problems Svevo was immersed in when he published his novel. Conscience had been assaulted not only by Freud, but before him by Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). They all suggested that rather than being something natural or native conscience has been artificially created inside us by social forces not particularly well intentioned. …Dr. Hong told us a simple truth, that we should forget ideologies and come back to conscience as the moral compass. Ideologies, as we know from the tragedies of the 20th century and are experiencing again in the 21st century, by obfuscating conscience create war and destruction. Only those who recognize the central role of conscience can build a civilization of peace and love."

"…order can be restored by returning to conscience. Let’s hope this will really happen in the Tai Ji Men case."

"Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous."

"Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear."

"The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention, it is a blemish like circumcision."