Ellen Key Quotes

No one should be forced to violate one's conscience, nor should anyone be forced out of service of the common good because there are some things their conscience tells them they cannot do.

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

Humanism: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.

Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.

Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

All a man can betray is his conscience.

A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

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.

Must we always do our duty? If so, how are we always to know what is our duty?

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.

More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

There is no college for the conscience.

You feel the intense desire to do good, to do right thing. At this stage, you also feel helpless.

We cannot avert our eyes without staining our souls.

My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.

Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.

I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.

He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness.

The belief in authority is the source of conscience; which is therefore not the voice of God in the heart of man, but the voice of some men in man.

Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.