“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”
Immanuel Kant, 1788 · Prussian philosopher of duty
Chapter 1
On Conscience
“The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.”
Book of Proverbs, 1611 · Hebrew wisdom literature
“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”
Marcus Aurelius, c. 180 AD · Roman emperor and Stoic
“The applause of the whole world will avail but little, if our own conscience condemn us.”
Adam Smith, 1759 · Scottish moral philosopher
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.”
William Shakespeare, 1603 · English playwright
“By oneself the evil is done, by oneself one suffers; by oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself, no one can purify another.”
The Dhammapada, c. 300 BC · canonical Buddhist verse collection
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?”
Henry David Thoreau, 1849 · American essayist who went to jail over a tax
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 · American essayist
Moral judgment usually arrives before the argument does. In this account the sense of right and wrong comes first, fast and felt, and reasoning follows to explain what has already been decided.
Jonathan Haidt, 2001 · social psychologist, social intuitionist model
Conscience is not one voice but several. Researchers mapping moral intuition across cultures find recurring concerns for care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity, weighted differently from person to person.
Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, 2013 · moral psychologists, Moral Foundations Theory
“If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self only, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Hillel, c. 200 AD · Jewish sage of Jerusalem, first century BCE
Free to read, always. Liking a verse or leaving a comment happens in the app, so the conversation has a name attached to it.