Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual’s moral philosophy or value system. In standard terms, Conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a person commits an act that conflicts with their moral values. Conscience is that troublemaker that drives the sleep out of your eyes when you have gone against it. The faculty will be the first to stop you from doing any wrong that goes against your moral evaluations.

In short, if you follow it, conscience is the only factor that will keep you on the straight path. However, the power of conscience can be fragile compared to your will to do wrong, but after the deed is done, its pinch will be the sharpest, which one can call guilt. So, no matter what, always heed your conscience.

Here are 180 best conscience quotes that will improve your inner world. You’ll discover authors like Einstein, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Nietzsche, and many more. Enjoy!

180 Conscience Quotes

Top 10 Conscience Quotes

“There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.” – Robert Burns

“People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.” – Will Rogers

“Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang — or rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid.” – Jack London

“You should not believe your conscience and your feelings more than the word which the Lord who receives sinners preaches to you.” – Martin Luther

“When his regard for himself is so high that his own self-respect demands he follow the path of courage and conscience that all benefit. ” – John F. Kennedy

“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 Jung

“Everything was filthy. Especially my conscience.” – Ruta Sepetys

“The same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.” – Viktor Emil Frankl

“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

“Forgetfulness – a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.” – Ambrose Bierce

What Is Conscience?

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“Conscience: self-esteem with a halo.” – Irving Layton

“Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.” – Ridley Scott

“Conscience reigns but it does not govern.” – Paul Valery

“Conscience is wiser than science.” – Johann Kaspar Lavater

“Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.” – James Freeman Clarke

“Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.” – Sigmund Freud

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.” – H. L. Mencken

“Conscience is the frame of character, and love is thea covering for it.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.” – Honoré de Balzac

“Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart.” – Joseph Cook

“Conscience is merely our own judgment of the right or wrong of our actions.” – Tryon Edwards

“Conscience is God’s presence in humans.” – Emanuel Swedenborg

“Conscience is God present in man.” – Victor Hugo

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe.” – William Shakespeare

“Conscience is better served by a myth.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

“Conscience is a thousand swords.” – William Shakespeare

“Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.” – H.L. Mencken

“Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one’s course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Conscience is a Jewish invention.” – Adolf Hitler

“Conscience in the soul is the root of all true courage. If a man would be brave, let him learn to obey his conscience.” – James Freeman Clarke

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” – William Shakespeare

“Conscience and wealth are not always neighbors.” – Philip Massinger

“Conscience and reputation are two things. Conscience is due to yourself, reputation to your neighbour.” – Saint Augustine

Guilty Conscience Quotes

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“But because of this the mosquito has a guilty conscience. To this day she goes about whining in people’s ears. ‘Zeee! Is everyone still angry at me?’ When she does that, she gets an honest answer.” – Verna Aardema

“A guilty conscience never feels secure.” – Publilius Syrus

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.” – Albert Camus

“What does your conscience say? — ‘You should become the person you are’.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.” – Voltaire

“Let your conscience be your guide.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.” – George Washington

“My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done somethin wrong just stand up and say you don’t it and say you’re sorry and get on with it. Dont haul stuff around with you.” – Cormac McCarthy

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?” – Henry David Thoreau

“More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly.” – Antonin Scalia

“Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.” – Martin Luther

“It’s fear that makes us lose our conscience. It’s also what transforms us into cowards.” – Marjane Satrapi

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

“We are a country with a conscience.” – John McCain

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” – Adam Smith

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Karl Jung

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” – Abraham Lincoln

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

“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.” – Albert Einstein

“My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.” – Karl Kraus

“Modesty is the conscience of the body.” – Honoré de Balzac

“It is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other.” – Martin Luther

“Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience violates the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.” – Hermann Hesse

“Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

“But before I could say anything, Myers blurted out, ‘I lied. Everything I said at McMillian’s trial was a lie. I’ve lost a lot of sleep and have been in a lot of pain over this. I can’t be quiet any longer.‘” – Bryan Stevenson

“No matter what happens, never betray the light in your heart. Stay true to your essence and authenticity.” – Adamas Shivananda

“If you want to experience the truth of who you are, you must be willing to examine and explore your dark side.” – Iyanla Vanzant

“I will do nothing because of public opinion, but everything because of conscience.” – Seneca

“It is impossible to have progress without conscience.” – Robert Rauschenberg

“God, if he believed in one—his conscience, if he had one—were the sole judges to whom he was answerable.” – Jules Verne

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

“Every place is safe to him who lives with justice.” – Epictetus

“Do not apologize if you haven’t done anything wrong.” – Gal Shapira

“Courage without conscience is a wild beast.” – Robert G. Ingersoll

“Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.” – Edward Snowden

“I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.” – Celia Rees

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” – Harper Lee

“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“I strongly oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We must stand for the right of every American to practice their faith according to the dictates of their conscience, whether it be in the public square or in the workplace.” – Mike Pence

“The power of the culture industry’s ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness.” – Theodore Adorno

“The Play’s the Thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” – William Shakespeare

“The law is the public conscience.” – Thomas Hobbes

“There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.” – Sophocles

Clear Conscience Quotes

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“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” – Adam Smith

“There will be people who will try to push you down and make you look bad. If you’ve done nothing wrong and have a clear conscience, don’t worry about it.” – Mufti Menk

“The best tranquilizer is a clear conscience.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Some people dislike you because your strength shows up their weakness. As long as your conscience is clear, learn to ignore them. Press on.” – Mufti Menk

“Keep conscience clear, then never fear.” – Benjamin Franklin

“He had a clear conscience. Never used it.” – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

“At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit’s idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him.” – Richard Adams

“A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.” – Doug Larson

“A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.” – Steven Wright

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

“A clear conscience is a good pillow.” – French proverb

“A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.” – Elizabeth I

No Conscience Quotes

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“Jamie was quiet for a minute, then he said, ‘We probably have no conscience. I think we ought to be homesick. Do you think Mom and Dad raised us wrong? They’re not very mean, you know; don’t you think that should make us miss them?’ ” – E.L. Konigsburg

“By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.” – Albert Camus

“A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all” – Octavia E. Butler

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

“Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won’t learn their lessons or practise their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience.” – Gaston Leroux

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

“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

“I will not be afflicted at men’s not knowing me; I will be afflicted that I do not know men.” – Confucius

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.” – Harper Lee

“A person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.” – Mark Twain

“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.” – Martin Luther

“Have some humility. Clean up your bedroom. Take care of your family. Follow your conscience. Straighten up your life.” – Jordan B. Peterson

“Guilt is society’s voice speaking in your head.” – Naval Ravikant

“A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.” – Thomas Hobbes

“I don’t run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving.” – David Attenborough

“Guilt is a hunter. My conscience mocked me, picking fights like a petulant child. It’s all your fault, the voice whispered.” – Ruta Sepetys

“Be the master of your will and the slave of your conscience.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

“Artemis paused, his gaze tugged momentarily upstairs to the converted loft. Perhaps, he thought. Do I really need all this gold? And was his conscience not needling him, leaching some of the sweetness from his victory? He shook himself. Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan. No emotion.” – Eoin Colfer

“If you want to succeed in politics you must keep your conscience firmly under control.” – David Lloyd George

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.” – William Butler Yeats

“A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface, and you will feel your true being within, separate from them, observing but not carried away.” – Sri Aurobindo

“Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.” – Michel de Montaigne

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

“Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that ‘a quiet conscience makes one strong!’” – Anne Frank

“To do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back.” – Marcus Aurelius

“They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.” – Joseph Conrad

“You start rewiring your brain in different ways by becoming conscious of unconscious patterns. Attention disrupts automatic thoughts and behaviors.” – Gal Shapira

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

“There’s no coming to consciousness without pain.” – Karl Jung

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

“A man’s first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.” – Mark Twain

“The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions.” – Italo Calvino

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

“In L.A., it’s very hard to have some kind of conscience of some style out there. The weather’s too hot; there’s no seasons.” – Jason Statham

“A conscience is the price of morality, and morality is the price of civilization.” – Tom Clancy

“The tendency to occultism is a symptom of regression in consciousness.” – Theodore Adorno

“I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.” – Anne Frank

“The first notes were low and murmuring. Again they made Griselda think of little rippling brooks in summer, and now and then there a sort of hum as of insects buzzing in the warm sunshine near. This humming gradually increased, till at last Griselda was conscience of nothing more – everything seemed to be humming, herself to, till at last she fell asleep.” – Mrs. Molesworth

“I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.” – Cato the Elder

“The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.” – Izaak Walton

“Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The sovereign individual, awake and attending to his or her conscience, is the force that prevents the group, as the necessary structure guiding normative social relations, from becoming blind and deadly.” – Jordan B. Peterson

“The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

Conscience Quotes Bible

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“If our consciences have nothing to charge us with, we can be sure that God is with us.” – 1 John 3:21

“Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a clear conscience, wishing to act rightly in every respect.” – Hebrews 13:18

“Keep your conscience clear, so that, whenever you are defamed, those who libel your way of life in Christ may be shamed.” – 1 Peter 3:16

“This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ….” – 1 Peter 3:21

“holding fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience..” – 1 Timothy 3:9

“I am grateful to God, Whom I worship with a clear conscience….” – 2 Timothy 1:3

“….I always strive to keep my conscience clear before God and man.” – Acts 24:16

“Paul looked intently at the Sanhedrin and said, ‘My brothers, I have conducted myself with a perfectly clear conscience before God to this day.’” – Acts 23:1

Conscience Quotes About Love

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“Love is too young to know what conscience is.” – William Shakespeare

“I focused on the fact that what God says is indeed best. It doesn’t matter if all the men in the world are against it. So seeing that God prefers his religion, seeing that God prefers a tender conscience, seeing that those who make themselves fools for the kingdom of heaven are wisest, and that the poor man who loves Christ is richer than the greatest man in the world who hates him, I turned to Shame and said, ‘Depart, you who are an enemy to my salvation. Should I listen to your words which are contrary to my sovereign Lord?‘” – John Bunyan

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” – Mark Twain

“A good conscience is paradise.” – Jacobus Arminius

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

“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Well, I think that Catholicism’s basic foundation of faith is personal conscience. I think it’s between you and God, not you and the Church.” – Martin Sheen

“Well . . . I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties . . . they lead their country by a short route to chaos.” – Robert Bolt

“Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won’t allow it.” – Tom Robbins

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

“A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.” – A. R. Rahman

“All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.” – Steven Wright

“Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society.” – Jean Baudrillard

“For the person who lives a virtuous life, of steadfastness and good judgment, happiness is always within reach.” – Massimo Pigliucci

“Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.” – Robert Redford

“The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.” – Bertrand Russell

“No, I don’t think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.” – Kurt Vonnegut

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“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

“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.” – Thomas Mann

“It is foolish to view realism and idealism as incompatible or to consider our power and wealth as encumbered by the demands of justice, morality, and conscience.” – John McCain

“In the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.” – Wallace Stevens

“The best way to get what you want is to make the world a better place. At the very least, it’s the only way to make sure that you can enjoy what you get without a dirty conscience.” – Ed Latimore

“Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.” – Samuel Johnson

“Self-discipline is when your conscience tells you to do something and you don’t talk back.” – WK Hope

“Securing freedom and property to all men, and above all things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” – Thomas Paine

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” – Karl Jung

“Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.” – Friedrich Nietszche

“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“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

“In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified.” – Robert Burns

“The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“In Hinduism, conscience, reason and independent thinking have no scope for development.” – B. R. Ambedkar

“The subconscious takes its revenge at night.” – Louis Scutenaire

“I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“There is no worse sin than one against his own conscience.” – Tim Holman

“Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith.” – John Henry Newman

“I’m more the conscience of the conservative than I am someone looking for consensus.” – Steve King

“But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.” – Khaled Hosseini

“When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.” – Abraham Lincoln

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