Individual Conscience Quotes

I have always been horrified by death sentences, and I decided, as an individual at least, that I could not participate in one, even by abstention … Tell him from me that I did not add my signature to yours for his sake, nor for the person whom I despise with all the force that is in me.

It is and has of long time been our constant sense and opinion that conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of religion.

It was difficult being a conscientious objector in the 1940's, but I felt I had to stick to my guns.

Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government.

The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul--our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.

Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.

We respect the individual conscience of every American on the painful issue of abortion, but believe as a matter of law that this decision should be left to a woman, her conscience, her doctor and her God. But abortion should not only be be safe and legal, it should be rare.

But no man has a monopoly of conscience.

Resolved, That the fundamental principle of the Protestant reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment in the interpretation of scripture, heretofore conceded to and exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by woman.

The concept of individual with a conscience is one whose highest allegiance is to his fellow man.

Socialists do not base their Socialism upon any interpretation of the language or meaning of Scripture, nor upon the real or supposed intentions of a beneficent Deity. They as a party neither affirm or deny those things, but leave it to the individual conscience of each member to determine what beliefs on such questions they shall hold. As a political party they wisely prefer to take their stand upon the actual phenomena of social life as they can be observed in operation amongst us to-day, or as they can be traced in the recorded facts of history.

Everyone's conscience in religion is between God and themselves, and it belongs to none other.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.

As God is the only worthy object of all religious worship, and nothing can be true religion but a voluntary obedience unto His revealed will … every person has an unalienable right to act in all religious affairs according to the full persuasion of his own mind, where others are not injured thereby …

I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.

Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another's keeping.

Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.

What other people may think of the rightness or wrongness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, my innate conviction that it was wrong.

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

I do not need the written code of a spiritual belief to act like a decent human being.

The question of religion was a matter for each individual's conscience, and in a great many cases was the outcome of birth or residence in a certain geographical area.

I have spent almost my entire adult life fighting to defend the religious liberty of every American to follow his or her faith and live according to his conscience.