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:

    Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
    Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)

    Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the “higher life.”
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    A man’s conscience and his judgement is the same thing; and as the judgement, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
    Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)