: the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good
She had a guilty conscience.
b
: a faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts
guided by conscience
c
: the part of the superego in psychoanalysis that transmits commands and admonitions to the ego
2
: conformity to what one considers to be correct, right, or morally good : conscientiousness
3
: sensitive regard for fairness or justice : scruple
… it is a politician's natural instinct to avoid taking any stand that seems controversial unless and until the voters demand it or conscience absolutely requires it. Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, 2006We like to imagine literature as the still, small voice of human conscience. It is that only rarely, however. Actively and passively, it has always borne along pernicious ideas. Marilynne Robinson, New York Times Book Review, 15 Mar. 1987So she had lied to him, but so had he to her, they were quits on that score and his conscience was calm. Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel, (1950) 1958The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency … E. B. White, Charlotte's Web, 1952 The thief must have had an attack of conscience, because he returned the wallet with nothing missing from it.
Recent Examples on the WebReconstructionists embraced America as a constantly changing political reality that could become a multiracial democracy through the collective will of people of conscience.Time, 15 Sep. 2022 To Rachael Abell, the school-committee president in Beverly, Massachusetts—where, until 2018, full-day kindergarten cost $4,000 a year—this problem of access was a failure of conscience on the part of her district. Keija Parssinen, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2022 There’s also a second drill sergeant, Rosales (Raúl Castillo), who seems to have a conscience, a firm core of humanity. David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Sep. 2022 His was a rich and unsettling riddle of conscience. Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 7 Sep. 2022 He has not been charged, but the Bills could not, in good conscience, dress Araiza given the circumstances. Sal Maiorana, USA TODAY, 27 Aug. 2022 And there is no other choice for a state leader, a governor, in good conscience, then to declare it as such and begin to enforce the laws of the land and secure the border and protect their citizens. Adam Shaw, Fox News, 9 July 2022 Williams had no conscience in discerning between a good shot and a bad shot.oregonlive, 27 May 2022 Amnesty International named them prisoners of conscience. Evgeny Lebedev, Vogue, 30 Aug. 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin conscientia, from conscient-, consciens, present participle of conscire to be conscious, be conscious of guilt, from com- + scire to know — more at science