Iris Murdoch Quotes

There are only two ways to be a god: through creation or murder.

Sometimes I feel like God…when I order someone killed – they die the same day.

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.

Religion is just mind control.

He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.

We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.

Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as he had me in his power he kept his word.

We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!

Two things rule the world -- reward and punishment.

Anyone who goes against my decisions, I liquidate him

Boys, I've just reminded Hubert that I've got his balls in my pocket.

If a king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those deserving to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker like fish on a spit.

Reward and punishment are the twin instruments of power in the State; they must not be revealed to anyone.

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence

Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.

Welcome, Ruin said, to godhood.

She would of been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.

It's nice to know that [God] can destroy us in a myriad of ways.

Not a single leaf moves in this country if I'm not the one moving it.

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage - in controlling something, period.

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.

Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.