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Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it. Conscience doth make cowards of us all, eh mamma mia? If you start an argument with yourself, that makes two people at least, and when you have two people, one of them starts appeasing the other.

— Mary McCarthy Birds of America (1971)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: "Epistle from Mother Carey's Chicken"
Work: Birds of America, 1971
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Notes from Wikiquote

Peter quotes 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all' from the 'To be, or not to be' speech in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary McCarthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.