After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.

What is a historian, anyway? It is someone who uses facts to record the development of humanity.

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

I have always made an effort to render every detail of my reality with the greatest accuracy; but I have never paid attention to whether my presentation of historical facts was an exact one.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

An action doesn't have to be wrong just because it is not logical. It doesn't have to be right just because it has its logic.

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

I think that if there are positions that you can't argue... then the responsibility is probably to resign. If one's own conscience is opposed to the requirements and responsibilities of the job, then it's time to leave the job.

We cannot appeal to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep.

A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures.

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

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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

It wouldn't sit easily on one's conscience that you had been warned and there could be danger, but nevertheless you went ahead and said let's dispense these drugs.

Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Living with a conscience is like driving with the brakes on.

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

God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.

To admit there is no god is to provide free license to pillage and rape with clear conscience.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations. He's got to put all his talent and feeling into them!

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Memorials become relics if they do not stir our modern conscience.

The U.N. acts as the world's conscience, and over eighty-five percent of the work that is done by the United Nations is in the social, economic, educational and cultural fields.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

The conscience of children is formed by the influences that surround them; their notions of good and evil are the result of the moral atmosphere they breathe.

Lord of myself, accountable to none, but to my conscience, and my God alone.

The enforcement of the law cannot depend on the justice of a cause or one man's conscience.