Date: 1759

"They are upon these occasions commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust in human conduct; and this circumstance seems to have misled several very eminent authors, to draw up their systems in such a manner, as if they had supposed that the original judgments of mankind...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1780-1?

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

— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

Date: 1782

"In this view of the case perhaps that species of detraction, which a court of law will not denominate a libel, in a court of conscience and in the eye of Heaven shall amount to murder. I had almost forgot to add that Castillo was a poet."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

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)