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:

    What does your conscience say?—”You must become who it is that you are.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until—in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known—we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt.
    Judith Viorst (20th century)