CONSCIENCE
QUOTES
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“SixDegrees.org is about using the idea that we
are all connected to accomplish something good.
It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something
more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be
a force for good, by bringing a social conscience
to social networking.”
-- Kevin Bacon
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A
pen rather than a lance has been my weapon of
offence and defence; with its point I should prick
the civic conscience and bring into a neglected
field men and women who should act as champions
for those afflicted thousands least able to fight
for themselves.
-- Clifford Beers
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Today social justice represents one of the most
serious challenges to the conscience of the world.
The abyss between those who are within the world
'order' and those who are excluded is widening
day by day. The use of leading-edge technologies
has made it possible to accumulate wealth in a
way that is fantastic but perverse because it
is unjustly distributed. Twenty-percent of humankind
control eighty percent of all means of life. That
fact creates a dangerous imbalance in the movement
of history.
-- Leonardo Boff
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To assert that it is possible to establish peace
between men of different nations is simply to
assert that man, whatever his ethnical background,
his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is
capable of reason. Two forces within the individual
contribute to the development of his conscience
and of his morality: reason and sensitivity.
-- Léon Bourgeois
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There
is a higher law than the law of government. That's the
law of conscience.
-- Stokely Carmichael
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The
exploitation of women, mass hunger, disregard
for freedom of conscience and for freedom of speech,
widespread and racial discrimination -- all these
evils are far too prevalent to be overlooked.
-- René Samuel
Cassin
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"When
people in a democracy are not educated in the
art of living --- to strengthen their conscience,
compassion, and ability to question and think
critically --- they can be easily manipulated
by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as
wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant
citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship."
-- Paul K. Chappell
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“While we diminish the stimulant of fear, we must
increase to prisoners the incitements of hope, in
proportion as we extinguish the terrors of the law,
we should awaken and strengthen the control of the
conscience.”
-- Dorothea Dix |
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Never do anything against conscience even if the
state demands it.
-- Albert Einstein
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If
the Gandhian moment is to be realized, then it
must encompass both concerns with the violence
of weapons and the violence of inequitable structures
of domination and exploitation. Perhaps, unwittingly,
the visibility of this violence due to the globalization
of media coverage, especially TV, will hasten
the process by which the peoples of the world
sick from violence and the suffering entailed,
will hasten the awakening of conscience and commitment
needed to carry forward the struggle for a nonviolent
world order. This is as much as we can hope for
at present, but such a hope will certainly prove
vain if we do not also act to the fullness of
our individual and collective capacities to rid
the world of war and violence.
-- Richard
Falk
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…
we believe in the vocation of communion and participation
of our people, who day to day awaken to their political
conscience and express their desire for change and
profound democratization of society. A change based
on justice, built with love, and which will bring
us the most anxiously desired fruits of peace.
-- Adolfo Perez
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One
who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells
him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty
of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience
of the community over its injustice, is in reality
expressing the highest respect for law. --
Martin Luther
King, Jr
"The
nonviolent approach does not immediately change
the heart of the oppressor. It first does something
to the hearts and souls of those committed to
it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up
resources of strength and courage that they did
not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent
and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation
becomes a reality."
-- Martin Luther
King, Jr.
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Cowardice
asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the
question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question:
is it popular? But conscience asks the question:
is it right? And there comes a time when one must
take a position that is neither safe, nor politic,
nor popular- but one must take it simply because
it is right. --
Martin Luther King,
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The
value of our shared reward will and must be measured
by the joyful peace which will triumph, because
the common humanity that bonds both black and white
into one human race, will have said to each one
of us that we shall all live like the children of
paradise. Thus shall we live, because we will have
created a society which recognizes that all people
are born equal, with each entitled in equal measure
to life, liberty, prosperity, human rights and good
governance. Such a society should never allow again
that there should be prisoners of conscience nor
that any person's human rights should be violated.
-- Nelson Mandela |
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Peace
demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult
sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war.
It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much
more perfect purity of conscience.
-- Thomas Merton
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The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing
sustaining and powerful movement whose interest
is to prove that religion has a healing side as
well as a killing side, and that democracy is the
consequence of conscience
-- Bill Moyers |
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“The
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly;
it is dearness only that gives everything its
value. I love the man that can smile in trouble,
that can gather strength from distress and grow
brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little
minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and
whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue
his principles unto death.”
-- Thomas Paine.
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"Out of our first century of national life we
evolved the ethical principle that it was not
right or just that an honest and industrious
man should live and die in misery. He was entitled
to some degree of sympathy and security. Our
conscience declared against the honest workman's
becoming a pauper, but our eyes told us that
he very often did."
-- Frances Perkins
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“When
will our consciences grow so tender that we
will act to prevent human misery rather than
avenge it?”
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
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"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 |
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