Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Follow your internal moral compass even when authority figures order otherwise.
In plain terms
Always act according to your conscience, no matter what the government says.
What can you take from it?
Personal integrity outweighs external commands.

Where it applies

  • political dissent
  • workplace ethics
  • legal conflicts

Putting it to work

  • resisting unjust orders
  • whistleblowing
  • civil disobedience

Questions to consider

  • When does duty to state end and duty to self begin?
  • How do you define your conscience?

Another view

Sometimes following conscience can lead to severe personal consequences or legal trouble.

More from Albert Einstein

  1. I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I …

    Permalink to quote #44
  2. Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his sp…

    Permalink to quote #46
  3. Er ist eine Skala der Proportionen, die das Schlechte schwierig und das Gute leicht macht.

    Permalink to quote #43

Related quotes

  1. I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have…

    Siegfried SassoonSiegfried Sassoon quote #1
  2. There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.

    Hartley ShawcrossHartley Shawcross quote #1
  3. My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.

    William PennWilliam Penn quote #1