Quote

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

Peter Singer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Peter Singer
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 6
Philosopher
Politician
Professor
Writer
Melbourne
Australia
Peter Albert David Singer
Peter A. D. Singer
Often
Extreme
States
Extremes
Needs
Condition
Material
Materials
Unsatisfied
Poverty
Powerlessness
Conditions
Accompanied
State
Degrading

More quotes by Peter Singer

Image
We don't usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people - these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. In ancient Greece and Rome, ethical choices about food were considered at least as significant as ethical choices about sex.
Peter Singer
Image
If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.
Peter Singer
Image
There could conceivably be circumstances in which an experiment on an animal stands to reduce suffering so much that it would be permissible to carry it out even if it involved harm to the animal... [even if] the animal were a human being.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
The Internet, like the steam engine, is a technological breakthrough that changed the world.
Peter Singer
Image
The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.
Peter Singer
Image
Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.
Peter Singer
Image
There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.
Peter Singer
Image
The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.
Peter Singer
Image
What is there about the notion of a person, at law, that makes every living member of the species Homo sapiens a person, irrespective of their mental capacities, but excludes every nonhuman animal - again, irrespective of their mental capacities?
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
If they [animals] were really to get the equal consideration that I believe they should, we wouldn't have commercial animal production in this country.
Peter Singer
Image
I don't see how anyone could really think that if you have a choice between saving the life of one person and saving the lives of a million people, to say - well, I've saved the one - can you really take that seriously? I can't.
Peter Singer
Image
We have a new generation of very rich people who want to do more with their money than buy a lot of expensive toys. They want to live meaningful lives.
Peter Singer
Image
We are not especially 'interested in' animals. Neither of us had ever been inordinately fond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way that many people are. We didn't 'love' animals.
Peter Singer
Image
Nineteen thousand children [are] dying every day. Does it really matter that we're not walking past them in the street? Does it really matter that they're far away? I don't think it does make a morally relevant difference.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals.
Peter Singer