#conscience

The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them. Alcohol gave us the false courage to do it and numbed our conscience as we did. Alcohol was the great enabler, and the great anesthetic. It wasn’t God who was dead. We were. – p. 116 ↗

— Ray A.

#enabler #honesty #courage

The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another? ↗

— Jon Katz

#judgement #love #true #freedom

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount. ↗

— Tom Hodgkinson

#drinking #guilt #freedom

The Bible is not absurd for the people who wrote it; it becomes absurd when people in our day insist on taking it literally. The Bible does not present us with material that is ridiculous in the context from which it came. The Bible springs from the context in which people then were thinking, searching, and trying to find answers . ↗

— Robert Alley

#feminism #religion #freedom

Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#life #people #life

Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do. ↗

— Joyce Meyer

#conscience #duty #character

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#innocence #world

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#good-and-evil #humanity #native-americans #self-determination #fighting

That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear? ↗

— Kristin Cashore

#conscience #fear #kristin-cashore #conscience

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. ↗

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#individual #individual responsibility #judgment #like #nothing