A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Acts Always Conscience Contemplative Nobody Person Without

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

Thomas Aquinas

POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.

Ambrose Bierce

Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?" The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court." "And why is that?" "Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience—only much more convincingly.

Jim Butcher

We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience... It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again.

Samuel Rutherford

What I cannot live with may not bother another man's conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.

Hannah Arendt

A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience-never empty-the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.

Gaston Bachelard

You're either a person with a conscience, or you're not. I think I've got quite a fine conscience.

Peter Morgan

But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.

Mark Twain

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?

Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

You have to develop a conscience and if on top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you have talent without conscience, you are just one of many thousand journalists.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Science sans conscience n' est que le ruine de l'âme. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruine of the soule.

Francois Rabelais

My understanding of the Electoral College is that they have the right to vote for who they want. So they should vote their conscience, and if their conscience leads them that way, they should follow their conscience.

Barbara Boxer

Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God and the conscience.