Date: 1780-1?

"The inner judicial proceeding of conscience may be aptly compared with an external court of law."

— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

Date: 1781, second ed. 1787

"Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to pro...

— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

Date: 1797-8, 1799

"Conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law."

— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

Date: 1797-8, 1799

"Consciousness of an inner court in the human being ('before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another') is conscience."

— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

Date: 1833, 1840

"The phenomena must be freed once and for all from the grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)