Conscience

Conscience

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his/her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms. The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of Western philosophy.

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Famous quotes containing the word conscience:

    “The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience ... not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”
    —Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

    “Pray for the Liberty of the Conscience to revive among us.... Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.”
    —James Madison (1751–1836)

    “The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.”
    —Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)