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Will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?

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
Recognize
Exploitation
Challenge
Terrorists
Species
Rebel
Capacity
Ending
Indefensible
Prove
Forced
Rebels
Position
Terrorist
Altruism
Challenges
Genuine
Ruthless
Power
Rise
Morally

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An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.
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I believe that nationalism is a very strong force, but there are other forces operating there are tendencies pushing towards a larger picture, especially in Europe, I think but I still think nationalism is real.
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History is not going to look kindly on us if we just keep our head in the sand on armed autonomous robotics issue because it sounds too science fiction.
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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.
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Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.
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Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.
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When children see animals in a circus, they learn that animals exist for our amusement. Quite apart from the cruelty involved in training and confining these animals, the whole idea that we should enjoy the humiliating spectacle of an elephant or lion made to perform circus tricks shows a lack of respect for the animals as individuals.
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All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.
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The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.
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Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
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Should one break in and free the animals? That is illegal, but the obligation to obey the law is not absolute. It was justifiably broken by those who helped runaway slaves in the American South, to mention only one possible parallel.
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What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.
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If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.
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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.
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Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.
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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.
Peter Singer