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Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.

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
Littles
Philosophers
Little
Thinker
Long
Philosopher
Majors
Major
Disrepute
Regard
Herbert
Read
Spencer
Social
Darwinism

More quotes by Peter Singer

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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.
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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Every day we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.
Peter Singer
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I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.
Peter Singer
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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
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In the sense that you're not at the centre of power, like a president or prime minister of a major power, everyone is marginalised my position doesn't isn't unique in that respect. I think there are different sorts of relevance in different contexts.
Peter Singer
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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.
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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According to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in preserving nature, that preserving an endangered plant is valuable only if it benefits humans or other animals. Intuitively, that seems wrong but perhaps I shouldn't trust my intuition here.
Peter Singer
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Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare - but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion.
Peter Singer
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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.
Peter Singer
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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.
Peter Singer
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Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.
Peter Singer
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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
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There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.
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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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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Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans.
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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Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will.
Peter Singer