W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.

You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

It's the community that helps form our moral compass. It's those attitudes that I've remembered through my entire lifetime.

I strongly believe in my own rights and wrongs and impose them on myself and my family.

Conscience without judgment is superstition.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

I don't accept ideologies that are not a product of consensus. I don't have an ideology, but I do have a sense of what's right and what's wrong.

People are judgmental about sex, but everyone has their own moral code. So unless you are hurting people, who are we to say what's right?

I have a pretty keen ethical compass.

Humans are the only ones who are the custodians of other people's morals.

The first step to be taken by everyone who wishes to act morally is to decide not to act according to the general customs and doings of his fellow-men.

A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

Don't run your life by what's legal or illegal. Run your life based on what's right or wrong.

How many things both just and unjust are sanctioned by custom?

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

Don't be ashamed to let your conscience be your guide.

I should love to satisfy all, if I possibly can; but in trying to satisfy all, I may be able to satisfy none. I have, therefore, arrived at the conclusion that the best course is to satisfy one’s own conscience and leave the world to form its own judgment, favorable or otherwise.

Just because it's a rat race doesn't mean it's okay to be a rat.

I just listened to that inner voice. By the way, it's always a good move to listen to that inner voice... if it doesn't lead to a crime

High ethics and religious principles form the basis for success and happiness in every area of life.

It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.