Speaking from the pulpit: Jeff Bezos at today’s event.

Posting from Santa Monica, Calif.: One of the most striking moments during Amazon’s press conference here today was a manifesto, of sorts, that was delivered toward the end of the event by Jeff Bezos.

Talking about the relatively low prices the company is charging for its new Kindle Fire tablet lineup, the Amazon CEO explained the company’s strategy with a single sentence that an accompanying slide called the “Amazon Doctrine.”

“We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices,” he said.

He didn’t mention Apple by name during this part of the event, but the implication was clear: Amazon is taking a decidedly different approach than its primary competitor in the tablet market, and Bezos believes his strategy is better for the consumer and the company in the end — aligning their interests far more effectively, in his view.

Here are three key excerpts from his comments …

“We don’t need you to be on the upgrade treadmill. If we made our money when people bought the device, we’d be rolling out programs left and right to try to get you to upgrade. In fact, we’re happy that people are still using Kindle Ones that are five years old. They’re still reading on them, and every time they buy a book, that’s good for us. That’s alignment.”

“If we made a lot of money when we sell the device — if we allowed ourselves to make a lot of money when we sell the device, we’d be tempted to use that Kindle bookstore to make sure you only buy our devices instead of working so hard as our teams do on interoperability.”

“Let me point out here, too, I am not talking about the razor and razor blade model. We don’t like that model, either. That’s the model where you lose a lot of money when you sell the device and you have to make it up somehow. For a completely different set of reasons, that also misaligns you with your customers.”

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