"A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do - but it does not keep him from doing it"
About this Quote
A painted stripe on asphalt sets a boundary, but it cannot turn the wheel. That is the force of comparing conscience to a highway line: it signals danger and sets limits, yet it has no power to stop a hand already gripping the steering wheel of desire, anger, or habit. Moral insight does not automatically produce moral action. The gap between knowing and doing is the old human problem of weakness of will, recognized from Pauls lament of doing the evil he hates to modern psychology’s account of impulse and rationalization.
The metaphor also suggests the difference between warnings and safeguards. A line is not a guardrail or a rumble strip. Conscience can alert, accuse, or prick, but it needs help from character, practice, accountability, and environments designed to make the right course easier to follow. Just as engineers add barriers, speed limits, and lighting to reduce crashes, people build routines, commitments, and communities that turn fragile good intentions into sturdier behavior.
Frank Howard Clark, a Hollywood screenwriter from the early 20th century, had a gift for crisp, wry aphorisms. The highway image reflects the era’s faith in mobility and speed, and its anxieties about control. Cars offered freedom with peril; modern life enlarged personal choice while thinning the old external constraints. The conscience had to do more work just as it became clearer that it cannot enforce compliance on its own.
There is a humane realism here. Conscience is not dismissed as useless; it is praised for telling us where not to go. But it is not romanticized as an inner policeman. The self still must steer. That calls for modesty about our own resilience, compassion for others’ lapses, and practical wisdom about shaping conditions that keep us between the lines when sheer moral resolve might not be enough.
The metaphor also suggests the difference between warnings and safeguards. A line is not a guardrail or a rumble strip. Conscience can alert, accuse, or prick, but it needs help from character, practice, accountability, and environments designed to make the right course easier to follow. Just as engineers add barriers, speed limits, and lighting to reduce crashes, people build routines, commitments, and communities that turn fragile good intentions into sturdier behavior.
Frank Howard Clark, a Hollywood screenwriter from the early 20th century, had a gift for crisp, wry aphorisms. The highway image reflects the era’s faith in mobility and speed, and its anxieties about control. Cars offered freedom with peril; modern life enlarged personal choice while thinning the old external constraints. The conscience had to do more work just as it became clearer that it cannot enforce compliance on its own.
There is a humane realism here. Conscience is not dismissed as useless; it is praised for telling us where not to go. But it is not romanticized as an inner policeman. The self still must steer. That calls for modesty about our own resilience, compassion for others’ lapses, and practical wisdom about shaping conditions that keep us between the lines when sheer moral resolve might not be enough.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by Frank
Add to List
