Quote

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.

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
First
Step
Stepping
Take
Beginning
Traveled
Like
Steps
Advance
Shall
Onto
Cannot
Leads
Ends
Distance
Escalator
Reason
Independent
Escalators
Firsts
Sight
Upward

More quotes by Peter Singer

Image
Ethics is inescapable.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
Pain is pain, and the importance of preventing unnecessary pain and suffering does not diminish because the being that suffers is not a member of our own species.
Peter Singer
Image
Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare - but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion.
Peter Singer
Image
More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency.
Peter Singer
Image
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.
Peter Singer
Image
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
Image
Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.
Peter Singer
Image
Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.
Peter Singer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the slippery slope: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.
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
Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans.
Peter Singer
Image
If you earn a lot of money, you can give away a lot of money.
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
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