Peter Singer Quotes

Quotes about:

• All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.

  Peter Singer

  Encouragement, Nature, Animal

  "Peter Singer" by Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. February 14, 2009.

  98 Copy quote

• Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.

  Peter Singer

  Sometimes, Killing, Infant

  "Practical Ethics". Book by Peter Singer, 1979.

  46 Copy quote

• If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

  Peter Singer

  Sacrifice, Moral, Importance

  Peter Singer (2015). “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, p.17, Oxford University Press

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Animal, Degrees, Doe

  Peter Singer (2015). “Animal Liberation”, p.31, Random House

  77 Copy quote

• The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.

  Peter Singer

  Philosophy, Sacred, Life Is

  20 Copy quote

• When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.

  Peter Singer

  Loss, Happy Life, Adverse Effects

  Peter Singer (2011). “Practical Ethics”, p.163, Cambridge University Press

  45 Copy quote

• If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.

  Peter Singer

  Thinking, Climate, Looks

  Peter Singer (2016). “Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter”, p.316, Princeton University Press

  7 Copy quote

• To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected.

  Peter Singer

  Mean, Judging, Trying

  "Chew the Right Thing". Chew the Right Thing, www.motherjones.com. May 3, 2006.

  25 Copy quote

• Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

  Peter Singer

  Christian, Religious, Animal

  21 Copy quote

• We should give the same respect to the lives of animals as we do to the lives of humans.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Giving, Should

  28 Copy quote

• The traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments.

  Peter Singer

  Views, Progress, Development

  20 Copy quote

• Every day we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

  Peter Singer

  Judgement, Everyday, Way

  "The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress". Book by Peter Singer, 1981.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Race, Giving, Racist

  Peter Singer (1993). “Practical Ethics”, p.88, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare - but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion.

  Peter Singer

  Abortion, Needs, Should

  37 Copy quote

• Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Standards, Valuable

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Animal, Abuse, Needs

  Peter Singer, Jim Mason (2007). “The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter”, Rodale Books

  52 Copy quote

• Since ancient times, philosophers have maintained that to strive too hard for one's own happiness is self-defeating.

  Peter Singer

  Self, Philosopher, Ancient

  Peter Singer (1982). “The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology”, Plume

  8 Copy quote

• Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.

  Peter Singer

  Sex, Animal, Race

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Past, Thinking

  49 Copy quote

• What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.

  Peter Singer

  Faith, Believe, Argument

  22 Copy quote

• People tend to care about dogs because they generally have more experience with dogs as companions; but other animals are as capable of suffering as dogs are. Few people feel sympathy for rats. Yet rats are intelligent animals, and there can be no doubt that rats are capable of suffering and do suffer from countless painful experiments performed on them. If the army were to stop experiments on dogs and switch to rats instead, we should not be any less concerned.

  Peter Singer

  Dog, Army, Animal

  "Animal-rights pioneer says de Blasio carriage deal misses bigger picture" by Dana Rubinstein, www.politico.com. January 25, 2016.

  51 Copy quote

• Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Ethics, Vegetarian

  Jim Mason, Peter Singer (1980). “Animal Factories”, Crown

  36 Copy quote

• There are some circumstances, for example, where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it's better that child should not live, when killing the newborn baby is not at all wrong ... not like killing the chimpanzee would be.

  Peter Singer

  Baby, Children, College

  44 Copy quote

• Sometimes animals may suffer more because of their more limited understanding. If, for instance, we are taking prisoners in wartime we can explain to them that although they must submit to capture, search, and confinement, they will not otherwise be harmed and will be set free at the conclusion of hostilities. If we capture wild animals, however, we cannot explain that we are not threatening their lives. A wild animal cannot distinguish an attempt to overpower and confine from an attempt to kill; the one causes as much terror as the other.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Understanding, Suffering

  35 Copy quote

• If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant.

  Peter Singer

  Dog, Communication, Animal

  20 Copy quote

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