Peter Singer Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

View all Peter Singer Quotes
Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

Peter Singer
Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.

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

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

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

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

Peter Singer
We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we could have prevented.

Peter Singer
The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.

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

Peter Singer
I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.

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

Peter Singer
Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper.

Peter Singer
According to the Dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings...

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

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

Peter Singer
The difficult issue is not whether the end can ever justify the means, but which means are justified by which ends.

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

Peter Singer
There is no humane slaughter requirement for wild fish caught and killed at sea, nor, in most places, for farmed fish.

Peter Singer
Personal purity isn't really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.

Peter Singer
At present scientists do not look for alternatives simply because they do not care enough about the animals they are using.

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

Peter Singer
There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.

Peter Singer
Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.

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
We should aim for our children to be good people, and to live ethical lives that manifest concern for others as well as for themselves.

Peter Singer
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
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
We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely - or, if that is not possible, to find less cruel and more sustainable alternatives to eating them.

Peter Singer
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
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