411 Quotes by Peter Singer
"Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers"
"If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose."
"Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards."
"It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold."
"While it is absurd to blame Marx for something he did not foresee and certainly would have condemned if he had foreseen it, the distanced between Marx's predicted communist society and the form taken by 'communism' in the twentieth century may in the end be traceable to Marx's misconception of the flexibility of human nature."
"Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upwards and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be travelled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we will end."
"The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings."
"Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness."