Peter Singer

Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong.

— Peter Singer

To turn the other cheek is to teach would-be cheats that cheating pays.

— Peter Singer

Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will.

— Peter Singer

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are…

— Peter Singer

We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely - or, if that is not possible, to find less…

— Peter Singer

There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.

— Peter Singer

“...it is in the rightness of our cause, and not the fear of our bombs, that our prospects of victory lie.”

— Peter Singer

Those who purchase meat, fur, and leather have no right to be shielded from the sights and sounds of the slaughterhouses from…

— Peter Singer

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.

— Peter Singer

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

— Peter Singer

Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can…

— Peter Singer

We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people…

— Peter Singer

The most callous, stupid things were done just because regulations required them...It was not until 1983, for example, that U.S. federal agencies…

— Peter Singer

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of…

— Peter Singer

Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the 'slippery slope': once we allow doctors to kill patients, we…

— Peter Singer

“The world does produce enough to feed its inhabitants – in fact we waste vast quantities of grain and soybeans by feeding them…

— Peter Singer

We don't usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people - these acts are obviously…

— Peter Singer

The animal liberation movement is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding…

— Peter Singer

The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them…

— Peter Singer

People tend to care about dogs because they generally have more experience with dogs as companions; but other animals are as capable…

— Peter Singer

“If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learned how difficult it is to be aware of the…

— Peter Singer

Suppose I grant that pigs and dogs are self-aware to some degree, and do have thoughts about things in the future. That…

— Peter Singer

There are many cases in which gifted children have done great things without special school programs. There are also gifted kids who…

— Peter Singer

“If our best-educated citizens have no idea how to answer these basic questions, we will struggle to build a democracy that can…

— Peter singer

There has been opposition to experimenting on animals for a long time. This opposition has made little headway because experimenters, backed by…

— Peter Singer

“We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are…

— Peter singer

“What we are doing to strangers in other communities right now is, therefore, far more serious and far more widespread than the…

— Peter Singer

Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.

— Peter Singer

The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect…

— Peter Singer

Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

— Peter Singer

The Internet, like the steam engine, is a technological breakthrough that changed the world.

— Peter Singer

Bush is morally a universalist. For instance, he says the freedom is good, the same thing is good, all over the world.…

— Peter Singer

The idea that we can actually have an impact on places more or less instantly, too, by responding in some way or…

— Peter Singer

We wait until Pandora's box is opened before we say, "Wow, maybe we should understand what's in that box." This is the…

— Peter Singer

I don't think there's anything in the compromise that means that there's a clash of ethics.

— Peter Singer

“It takes twenty-one pounds of protein fed to a calf to produce a single pound of animal protein for humans. We get…

— Peter Singer

“Helping is not, as conventionally thought, a charitable act that is praiseworthy to do but not wrong to omit. It is something…

— Peter Singer

Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.

— Peter Singer

If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.

— Peter Singer

In appropriate circumstances we are justified in using humans to achieve goals (or the goal of assisting animals).

— Peter Singer