But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Fool! Don’t you see now that I could have poisoned you a hundred times had I been able to live without you.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. ‚Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.‘ First of all, my girl is black: she’s Jamaican.

Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

My wife used to be an anchorwoman in Arizona, so she knew John McCain, and she liked him, and I kinda liked him.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

The truth is God created us to have relationship with us. He wants to love us and take care of us, and He wants us to love Him. That’s where our walk with Christ has to start.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.