Peter Singer Quotes

Just as we will spend large sums to preserve cities like Venice, even though future generations conc...

Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve c...

I don't think nationalism is alone holding the field it's in contention with a lot of different thin...

My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducin...

What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that...

If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to ...

If people are prepared to eat locally and seasonally, then they probably do pretty well in terms of ...

The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to eac...

Every profession will have its rogues, of course, no matter what oaths are sworn, but many health ca...

Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they l...

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to...

Robots already perform many functions, from making cars to defusing bombs - or, more menacingly, fir...

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the trib...

In the real world, 90% of the money spent on medical research is focused on conditions that are resp...

In an ideal world, the amount of money we spend on medical research to prevent or cure a disease wou...

Most of the robots being developed for home use are functional in design - Gecko's homecare robot lo...

I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public....

To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they h...

What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on...

The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality ...

To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby ...

It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true na...

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and care...

We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.

If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learned how difficult it i...

While it is absurd to blame Marx for something he did not foresee and certainly would have condemned...

Egoism... is not eliminated by economic reorganization or by material abundance. When basic needs ar...

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled... to be a ruler give...

For a merely conscious being, death is the cessation of experiences, in much the same way that birth...

In the absence of any general inference from ‘A is a potential X’ to ‘A has the rights of an X’, we ...

In thinking about ethics, we should not hesitate to question ethical views that are almost universal...

Our ancestors lived in groups of no more than a few hundred people, and those on the other side of a...

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed them...

It is interesting, in this context, to think again of our earlier argument that membership of the sp...

The capacity for suffering – or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness – is not ...

Suppose that we believe that in 200 years, people would be prepared to pay a million dollars (that's...

We have examined a number of ethical issues. We have seen that many accepted practices are open to s...

The merely conscious being does not have a preference for continued life. Perhaps while having a ple...

My suggestion, then, is that we accord the fetus no higher moral status than we give to a nonhuman a...

Pacifists have usually regarded the use of violence as absolutely wrong, irrespective of its consequ...

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed them...

If our life has no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find that when we have obt...

I agree with Varner and Scruton that the more one thinks of one's life as a story that has chapters ...

To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would...

At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2...

As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and po...

Their reliance on biblical quotations does not augur well for their for their openness to moral reas...

A society that decides its controversial issues by ballots does better than one that uses bullets – ...

A week-old baby is not a rational and self-aware being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose ra...

In a democracy, we should be reluctant to take any action that amounts to an attempt to coerce the m...

Laws and a settled decision procedure to generate them are a good thing. This gives us one important...

Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were o...

Almost any established decision procedure is better than a resort to force; for when force is used, ...

Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a ...

No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a c...

For preference utilitarians, taking the life of a person will normally be worse than taking the life...

When we make ethical judgments, we must go beyond a personal or sectional point of view and take int...

Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from ...

First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significan...

We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if...

Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according...

Some of the conclusions that I draw are very different from the ethical views most people hold today...

Reason is inherently expansionist. It seeks universal application.

Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper...

Evolution has no moral direction. An evolutionary understanding of human nature can explain the diff...

Hebrew word for "charity" tzedakah, simply means "justice" and as this suggests, for Jews, giving to...

In the past 20 years alone, it adds up to more death than were caused by all the civil and internati...

...moral relativism, a position many find attractive only until they are faced with someone who is d...

A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid--but when they were ...

Putting yourself in the place of others...is what thinking ethically is all about.

To say that life is meaningless is to express an attitude, not to state a fact

Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their ...

If we shrug our shoulders at the avoidable suffering of the weak and the poor, of those who are gett...

If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act according...

There are some things that, once lost, no amount of money can regain. Thus to justify the destructio...