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Sci-fi is often a metaphor. I think it's more the themes and questions that science fiction raises rather than the exact predictions that should guide us.

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
Science
Metaphor
Think
Theme
Thinking
Guides
Raises
Questions
Themes
Fiction
Predictions
Rather
Exact
Often
Guide

More quotes by 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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Those who purchase meat, fur, and leather have no right to be shielded from the sights and sounds of the slaughterhouses from which these products were produced.
Peter Singer
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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
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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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Ethics is inescapable.
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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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.
Peter Singer
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Lay off with the 'You reason, so you don't feel' stuff, please. I feel, but I also think about what I feel. When people say we should only feel I am reminded of Göring, who said 'I think with my blood.' See where it led him.
Peter Singer
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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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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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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
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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.
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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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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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.
Peter Singer
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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?
Peter Singer
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Becoming a vegan is a sure way of completely avoiding participation in the abuse of farmed animals. Vegans are a living demonstration of the fact that we do not need to exploit animals for food.
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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There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.
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