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It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.

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
Enforce
Assume
Assuming
Morality
Mistake
Law
Always

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Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.
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Putting the AR movement directly in opposition to the environmental movement, which should be our natural allies in fighting human arrogance and domination of the planet.
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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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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.
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I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.
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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.
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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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Sometimes we know the best thing to do, but fail to do it. New year's resolutions are often like that. We make resolutions because we know it would be better for us to lose weight, or get fit, or spend more time with our children. The problem is that a resolution is generally easier to break than it is to keep.
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To turn the other cheek is to teach would-be cheats that cheating pays.
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Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.
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In appropriate circumstances we are justified in using humans to achieve goals (or the goal of assisting animals).
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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.
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It is an indication of the extent to which people are now isolated from the animals they eat that children brought up on storybooks that lead them to think of a farm as a place where animals wander around freely in idyllic conditions might be able to live out their entire lives without ever being forced to revise this rosy image.
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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.
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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 you earn a lot of money, you can give away a lot of money.
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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.
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If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end.
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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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All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.
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