Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

My conscience is clear.

A feel-good style can be a symptom of unawareness or lack of caring.

It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

Undoubtedly, to salve your conscience, you have now and then helped some miserable human being, but millions of human beings were murdered and nary a protest was heard.

… knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

It's indifference and ignorance that stops people from doing the right thing.

My conscience is clean.

People don't think of themselves as evil.

Most people aren't good or bad. They're naive.

I shall say, that I feel myself virtuous, because my soul is at rest.

In the area of social righteousness we cannot be right on the inside and not do it. We cannot! Of course we have people who pretend that they can, but it simply isn't true.

Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.

Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.

I value people with a conscience. It's like a beeper from God.

Every man's conscience is vile and depraved / You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it’s you who must keep it satisfied.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

So many people say, "I'm a good person!" Like, why are you a good person? To be a good person you have to actively be good.