Top 276 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Singer - Page 2

Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will.

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.

Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs, the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net, in the form of social security payments, and usually free healthcare and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.

Attempts to defend amusement parks and circuses on the grounds that they 'educate' people about animals should not be taken seriously. Such enterprises are part of the commercial entertainment industry. The most important lesson they teach impressionable young minds is that it is acceptable to keep animals in captivity for human amusement.

Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn't do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

Dolphins are social mammals, capable of enjoying their lives. They form close bonds with other members of their group.

Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which parts of the world we want to be in immediate contact with.

I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature.

When fish experience something that would cause other animals physical pain, they behave in ways suggestive of pain, and the change in behaviour may last several hours.

Paradoxically, resource-rich developing countries are often worse off than comparable countries that lack those resources. One reason for this is that large resource endowments provide a huge financial incentive for attempts to overthrow the government and seize power.

In a democracy, citizens pass judgment on their government, and if they are kept in the dark about what their government is doing, they cannot be in a position to make well-grounded decisions.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

So, basically, my view is I don't want to support the exploitation of animals, and within reason, I will do what I can to avoid it, but it's not like it's a religion for me. It's not like I consider I'm polluted if somehow some bit of milk or cheese or something passes my lips.

For example, one way of giving yourself a strong incentive to reach your goal is to commit to pay money to someone if you fail. Better yet, you can specify that you will have to pay a certain sum to a cause that you detest.

When I was a child, my father used to take me for walks, often along a river or by the sea. We would pass people fishing, perhaps reeling in their lines with struggling fish hooked at the end of them. Once I saw a man take a small fish out of a bucket and impale it, still wriggling, on an empty hook to use as bait.

If you go back in time you'll find tribes that were essentially only concerned with their own tribal members. If you were a member of another tribe, you could be killed with impunity.

I'm not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy.

Several countries - among them Austria, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, India, Israel and Sweden - ban or severely restrict the use of wild animals in circuses. In Brazil, a movement to ban wild animals from circuses started after hungry lions managed to grab and devour a small boy.

There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between human and nonhuman animals. But what we are overlooking is the fact that nonhuman animals are conscious beings, that they can suffer.

The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done.

I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.

The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.

I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture.

The price we are willing to pay for safety cannot be infinite. It is distasteful to put a price on human life, but the more we spend on safety, the less we will have for our other goals.

We recognize the chicken as another conscious being. It's different from us, but it has a life, and if something is really important for that chicken, if it would work hard to try to get it, and if we can give it without sacrificing something that's really important to us, then we should.

If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library.

Human decision-making is complex. On our own, our tendency to yield to short-term temptations, and even to addictions, may be too strong for our rational, long-term planning.

My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.

Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving.

More people with HIV/Aids are getting inexpensive anti-retroviral drugs, and their life expectancy has increased, but universal access is still far off, and the disease is still spreading, if more slowly than before.

The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to each other in new ways, posing questions about how we should respond to people when all that we know about them is what we have learned through a medium that permits all kinds of anonymity and deception.

The idea that we can actually have an impact on places more or less instantly, too, by responding in some way or not responding, I think, also makes it true.

If somebody has an extreme amount of wealth and is not using it for some good purpose, only for their own enjoyment or satisfaction, then clearly there's a moral failing in the world in which we live.

Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world's greatest libraries - indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need.

For a long time, rich countries have promised to reduce poverty but have failed to match their words with adequate action. Of course, some important progress has been made and millions of lives have been saved, but millions more could be saved.

In most countries, it is possible to visit zoos and see bored animals pacing back and forth in cages, with nothing to do but wait for the next meal. Circuses are even worse places for animals. Their living conditions are deplorable, especially in travelling circuses where cages have to be small so that they can go on the road.

To make sustainable progress in reducing extreme poverty will require improvements in both the quantity and quality of aid.

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

Every profession will have its rogues, of course, no matter what oaths are sworn, but many health care professionals have a real commitment to serving the best interests of their clients.

Well the real concept of basic needs if you cut it right down are simply the physical needs that are unavoidable for all of us. So to have enough calories to keep our bodies going. Have shelter from extreme elements. To have water that is safe to drink, So I think that's the core of it.

Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.

It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.

When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that.

Privacy about giving is counterproductive. There is solid scientific research showing that people are more likely to give if they can see that others are giving. The richest people, in particular, should be setting an example.

Some vegetarians and vegans may object to in vitro meat, because they don't see the need for meat at all. That's fine for them, and of course they are free to remain vegetarians and vegans and choose not to eat in vitro meat.

So I think ethics is the broader thing that's less focused on prohibitions and is more perhaps looking at principles and questions and ideas about how to live your life.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

But I think the majority of cows, and even more so chickens and pigs, are leading pretty miserable lives.

Many European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand, have adopted legislation that creates a 'public lending right', where the government recognises that enabling hundreds of people to read a single copy of a book provides a public good, but that doing so is likely to reduce sales of the book.

Bush is morally a universalist. For instance, he says the freedom is good, the same thing is good, all over the world. So in that sense he's a universalist.

Then I think the sense of it being one community breaks down; but if you know instantly and respond within twenty-four hours, it's a very different sort of situation.

Open government is, within limits, an ideal that we all share. U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed it when he took office in January 2009.

I don't eat meat. I've been a vegetarian since 1971. I've gradually become increasingly vegan. I am largely vegan, but I'm a flexible vegan. I don't go to the supermarket and buy non-vegan stuff for myself. But when I'm traveling or going to other people's places, I will be quite happy to eat vegetarian rather than vegan.

It's because I work in ethics, and, more specifically, applied ethics, that I think it's important that if you have things to say that you think are right and you think could make the world a better place, it's important that many people read about them.