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:

    Martin Luther King, Jr., was the conscience of his generation.... He and I grew up in the same South, he the son of a clergyman, I the son of a farmer. We both knew from opposite sides, the invisible wall of racial segregation.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.
    William Congreve (1670–1729)

    Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
    We’re told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
    Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
    And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
    Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
    The first cat that was ever killed by Care.
    Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)