Hartley William Shawcross Quotes

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

I have to do what's right.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

I follow my conscience - and this is upsetting to some people, but I maintain the conscience is going to be the only thing between us and communication in the future.

No, moral conscience is one thing, the law is another. We have to hold onto this difference.

Conscience? Great souls do not worry themselves with such little details

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

You must always do what you feel is right.

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

You do what you want and know is right. That is the only law.

When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.

Just because people are in authority, if it doesn't seem right, don't do it. If it violates your own principles, don't do it.

You just have to do what you know is right.

I want to make this perfectly clear: you can be sure that I will never be a yes-man except to my own conscience.

Maybe I'll learn how, but the only thing I can do is turn down parts that would hurt my conscience.

You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

I am guilty of one thing - that I should have cleared out and not had anything to do with these criminals in the first place. Later it was too late. I was in up to my neck. But as for the atrocities, I had not a thing to do with them…

You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

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 because it is right.

Occasionally the conflict between 'what we stand for' and 'what we do' has been forthrightly addressed.