People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.
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Said by Mrs. Brookenham in The Awkward Age (1899), book VI, ch. IIIHenry James
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don't want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.
Albert Camus
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.
Thomas Hobbes
In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.
Felix Frankfurter
freedom is inseparable from conscience. And even if it is true that all the ideas developed by the social conciousness are the product of evoolution, conscience at least has nothing to do with the historic process. Conscience, both as a sense and as a concept, is a priori immanent in man, and shakes the very foundations of the society that has emerged from our ill-conceived civilisation. (p234)
Andrei Tarkovsky
He has a good character, and not many people do. I think he would rather not do anything wrong, whether on a moral or an artistic level. He is what you would call a man of conscience — not necessarily of judgment, but of conscience. I don't know any actors like that.
Paul Newman
James, Henry
James, Cheryl
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