George Eliot Quotes

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humored, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.

No one is born evil; it's just the choices that they make.

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.

I could answer that the way you want, but I'd hate myself in the morning.

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

Every time I have done things for political reasons, I have regretted it. Every time I have done what I thought was right, it has come out all right in the end.

It was a morally representative act. Helms withheld the information because it would have cost him his job.

I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right.

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at a sacrifice.

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.

The idea of 'breaking bad' and what that means in terms of the actions and decisions people make, and why they make them - it makes people question themselves in the 'What would I do?' kind of way.

With a lot of things in life, it's hard to do the right thing.

You can have a value system and be unable to totally live it.

As I heard out people who had done others wrong, I'd often wonder how a human allows his or her better judgement to override their conscience. When I share these feelings with my friends, they say, 'Everyone isn't like you.' But I think it's easy to assert your better feelings and not allow the darker side to dominate your personality.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.

There's right and there's wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.

... conscienceless efficiency is no match for efficiency quickened by conscience.

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light.