“I can’t stress too strongly that decisions determine destiny. You can’t make eternal decisions without eternal consequences.
“May I provide a simple formula by which you can measure the choices which confront you. It’s easy to remember, sometimes difficult to apply: You can’t be right by doing wrong; you can’t be wrong by doing right. Your personal conscience always warns you as a friend before it punishes you as a judge.”
| "Decisions Determine Destiny"
“The peace of Christ does not come by seeking the superficial things of life, neither does it come except as it springs from the individual’s heart.” He said further that this peace is “conditioned upon obedience to the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. … No man is at peace with himself or his God who is untrue to his better self, who transgresses the law of what is right either in dealing with himself by indulging in passion, in appetite, yielding to temptations against his accusing conscience, or in dealing with his fellowmen, being untrue to their trust. Peace does not come to the transgressor of law; peace comes by obedience to law, and it is that message which Jesus would have us proclaim among men.”
| Conference Report, Oct. 1938, p. 133.
“However, like other faculties, our consciences may become inert through sin or misuse. If we become desensitized to the things of God in our lives, we too lose reception of the signal needed to guide us. Keeping the commandments is our best assurance to maintain a strong signal with the Divine.”
| Gifts to Help Us Navigate Our Life
Every individual born to earth is given a detecting capability, a divinely appointed gift to distinguish truth from error. We call it our conscience. God calls it the Spirit of Christ. When we properly use this gift, we are naturally drawn to truth and repelled from error.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
| A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
“I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength in distress and grow brave by reaction. It is the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles to the death.”
Is good conscience important? It is a prize beyond expression! And conscience is more than a local standard or the accumulation of the mores and traditions of a community or a society or a generation. Whatever else it is, it is the voice of God speaking to us, inspiring moral obligation. Washington called it “that little spark of celestial fire.” It is true that we can desensitize our conscience, as it were. In the Book of Mormon we read of a group to whom God had spoken “in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling” (1 Ne. 17:45). It is also said that there are those who have become “dead as to things pertaining unto righteousness” (Alma 5:42). As we can desensitize a conscience, so to speak, so we can prepare ourselves better to hear the voice of the Lord by stripping off what the poet called the layers of “muddy vesture and decay,” by ceasing to sin and learning to obey. There is the privilege of learning true values and living to them.
| “Thank God It Can Be Done in My Time”
There is a defense mechanism to discern between good and evil. It is called conscience. It is our spirit’s natural response to the pain of sin, just like pain in our flesh is our body’s natural response to a wound—even a small sliver. Conscience strengthens through use.
| A Crown of Thorns, a Crown of Glory
When temptation besets us, we experience pain of conscience. A sensitive conscience is the evidence of a healthy spirit. The pain or guilt we feel is the spirit’s reaction to temptation, imperfection, or sin. Conscience is the companion of every traveler (Moro. 7:16–19), it can also make the trip very uncomfortable, since “all have sinned” and “the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance” ( Rom. 3:23 D&C 1:31). Thanks be to God for this supernal gift, for it can lead us to repentance and peace of conscience (Mosiah 4:1–3).
“..tithing isn’t something I do to clear my conscience so I can do whatever I want with the 90 percent–it also belongs to God! I must seek his direction and permission for whatever I do with the full amount. I may discover that God has different ideas than I do.”
| Money, Possessions and Eternity