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

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‚Is it safe?‘ Expediency asks the question, ‚Is it politic?‘ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‚Is it popular?‘ But Conscience asks the question, ‚Is it right?‘

If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

For I can raise no money by vile means.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

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

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended, and its religious traditions desecrated.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

In the world of money and investing, you must learn to control your emotions.

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.

Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

I do not pilfer victory.