Obama often criticizes policies that place the interests of the powerful ahead of the powerless. But through his administration's support of abortion rights Obama shows his lack of empathy for society's most powerless.

Police in China can do whatever they want after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation no discussion except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want - not only you your whole family and all people like you.

My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them and I can help them.

A Libertarian society of unfettered individualism spreads its benefits to virtually everyone - not just those who have the resources to seize political power.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles or control?

Society has to change but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an argument is exactly what liberty is even though it may never be resolved. In any authoritarian society the possessor of power dictates and if you try and step outside he will come after you.

The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.

When Whitney Houston died I felt great sadness. My sadness of course was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing your body would drop into a chair your head would tilt up a small smile would creep across your face and inside you knew that there was a higher power somewhere: gifted beautiful spiritual.

But the power of science lies in open publication which with the rise of the Internet is no longer constrained by the price of paper.

If modernist naturalism were true there would be no objective truth outside of science. In that case right and wrong would be a matter of cultural preference or political power and the power already available to modernists ideologies would be overwhelming.

But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods.

Neither science nor the politics in power nor the mass media nor business nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.

At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role and conduct themselves accordingly.

In the last fifty years science has advanced more than in the 2 000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.

Without renouncing the support of physics it is possible for the physiology of the senses not only to pursue its own course of development but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.

It is critical to develop a biofuel industry powered by feedstocks produced in every corner of the country in addition to the Midwest. That is why USDA has established five regional research centers working on science necessary to ensure profitable biofuels can be produced from a diverse range of feedstocks.

Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity which so often have been in conflict.