Peter Singer - Ethics Quotes

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Ethics is not an ideal system which is all very noble in theory but no good in practice. The reverse of this is closer to the truth: an ethical judgement that is no good in practice must suffer from a theoretical defect as well, for the whole point of ethical judgement is to guide practice.

Peter Singer
The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

Peter Singer
Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.

Peter Singer
It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about this responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.

Peter Singer
The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.

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

Peter Singer
The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.

Peter Singer
We don't usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people - these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. In ancient Greece and Rome, ethical choices about food were considered at least as significant as ethical choices about sex.

Peter Singer