Quote

To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.

Peter Singer

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Peter Singer
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 6
Philosopher
Politician
Professor
Writer
Melbourne
Australia
Peter Albert David Singer
Peter A. D. Singer
Members
Position
Simply
Race
Racists
Give
Preference
Giving
Member
Would
Racist
Life
Species

More quotes by Peter Singer

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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
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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
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Charitable giving is a huge sector in the United States. It amounts to $350 billion a year. And yet, I can't help feeling that a lot of that is wasted because people have not been thinking about how to do it as effectively as possible.
Peter Singer
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To turn the other cheek is to teach would-be cheats that cheating pays.
Peter Singer
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We should give the same respect to the lives of animals as we do to the lives of humans.
Peter Singer
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Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.
Peter Singer
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My fear is that that's what's going to happen with robotics and the military. Importantly, this discussion has to involve not just the scientists, but also the political scientists. It's got to be a multidisciplinary discussion. You can't have it be another repeat of what happened with the people working on the atomic bomb.
Peter Singer
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Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.
Peter Singer
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Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.
Peter Singer
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Marx saw that capitalism is a wasteful, irrational system, a system which controls us when we should be controlling it. That insight is still valid but we can now see that the construction of a free and equal society is a more difficult task than Marx realized.
Peter Singer
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No consideration at all is given to the interests of the pests - the very word pest seems to exclude any concern for the animals themselves. But the classification pest is our own, and a rabbit that is a pest is as capable of suffering, and as deserving of consideration, as a white rabbit who is a beloved companion animal.
Peter Singer
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Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will.
Peter Singer
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The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn't prove that that was wrong so we're clearer about that.
Peter Singer
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I believe that in this new world that we live in, we often have a responsibility, you know, to actually go beyond the thou shalt nots - that is, the not harming others - and say we can help others and we should be helping others.
Peter Singer
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The future of the world depends on how well we meet it.
Peter Singer
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More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency.
Peter Singer
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Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.
Peter Singer
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I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature. I think it ought to be governed by the standards of how it affects the individual animals, just as we'd want to deal with institutions that deal with humans by how they affect individual humans.
Peter Singer
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We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely - or, if that is not possible, to find less cruel and more sustainable alternatives to eating them.
Peter Singer
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As we realize that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest.
Peter Singer