Top 180 Peter Singer Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “When we eat plants, food takes on a different quality. We take from the earth food that is ready for us and does not fight against us as we take it.”

— Peter Singer

153. “Interest in business ethics courses has surged, and student activities at leading business schools are more focused than ever before on making business serve long-term social values.”

— Peter Singer

154. “What she really wants is a place with more tolerance for differences, less emphasis on materialism, where people value creativity and are interested in working on issues relating to peace and justice.”

— Peter Singer

155. “If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn’t it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another’s prospects of survival at the cost of their own?”

— Peter Singer

156. “We need to get over our reluctance to speak openly about the good we do. Silent giving will not change a culture that deems it sensible to spend all your money on yourself and your family, rather than to help those in greater need – even though helping others is likely to bring more fulfillment in the long run.”

— Peter Singer

157. “Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhoea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.”

— Peter Singer

158. “Should thousands of animals suffer so that a new kind of lipstick or floor wax can be put on the market?”

— Peter Singer

159. “If governments did not mislead their citizens so often, there would be less need for secrecy, and if leaders knew they could not rely on keeping the public in the dark about what they are doing, they would have a powerful incentive to behave better.”

— Peter Singer

160. “So, basically, my view is I don’t want to support the exploitation of animals, and within reason, I will do what I can to avoid it, but it’s not like it’s a religion for me. It’s not like I consider I’m polluted if somehow some bit of milk or cheese or something passes my lips.”

— Peter Singer

161. “Wages therefore tend to the lowest possible level compatible with keeping an adequate supply of workers alive.”

— Peter Singer

162. “I’m not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy.”

— Peter Singer

163. “Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn’t do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years.”

— Peter Singer

164. “An area of land used for crops will feed about ten times as many people as the same area of land used for grass-fed beef.”

— Peter Singer

165. “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.”

— Peter Singer

166. “The newspapers do little better. Their coverage of nonhuman animals is dominated by “human interest” events like the birth of a baby gorilla at the zoo, or by threats to endangered species; but developments in farming techniques that deprive millions of animals of freedom of movement go unreported.”

— Peter Singer

167. “I suppose what’s happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture.”

— Peter Singer

168. “I honestly don’t know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.”

— Peter Singer

169. “I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human.”

— Peter Singer

170. “Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.”

— Peter Singer

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

— Peter Singer

172. “If you are paying for something to drink when safe drinking water comes out of the tap, you have money to spend on things you don’t really need.”

— Peter Singer

173. “What you could say, and what I do argue in the book, is that he doesn’t have as much concern for the lives of Iraqis as he does for the lives of Americans, or even frozen American embryos.”

— Peter Singer

174. “If doing the most you can for others means that you are also flourishing, then that is the best possible outcome for everyone.”

— Peter Singer

175. “One might also ask why we should develop energy-intensive robots to work in one of the few areas – care for children or elderly people – in which people with little education can find employment.”

— Peter Singer

176. “If we could see our lives objectively, we could see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.”

— Peter Singer

177. “In the sense that you’re not at the centre of power, like a president or prime minister of a major power, everyone is marginalised; my position doesn’t isn’t unique in that respect. I think there are different sorts of relevance in different contexts.”

— Peter Singer

178. “Well the real concept of basic needs if you cut it right down are simply the physical needs that are unavoidable for all of us. So to have enough calories to keep our bodies going. Have shelter from extreme elements. To have water that is safe to drink, So I think that’s the core of it.”

— Peter Singer

179. “The idea that we can actually have an impact on places more or less instantly, too, by responding in some way or not responding, I think, also makes it true.”

— Peter Singer

180. “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

181. “But I think the majority of cows, and even more so chickens and pigs, are leading pretty miserable lives.”

— Peter Singer

182. “If we avoid junk foods that are high in sugar or fats and nothing else, about the only way we can fail to get enough protein is if we are on a diet that is insufficient in calories.36 Protein.”

— Peter Singer

183. “In a situation where many national leaders do the same thing and look out for national interests, and with an issue like global warming, you’re likely to get no solution, so I think you have to have some kind of ethical trump on some of those issues.”

— Peter Singer

184. “In the United States, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV.”

— Peter Singer

185. “Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act.”

— Peter Singer

186. “We do not have to make self-sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.”

— Peter Singer

187. “Legal, regulated voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have far less potential for abuse, and when they are available, there is no need to make it easy for people to find out how to kill themselves.”

— Peter Singer

188. “Pacifists have usually regarded the use of violence as absolutely wrong, irrespective of its consequences. This, like other ‘no matter what’ prohibitions, assumes the validity of the distinction between acts and omissions. Without this distinction, pacifists who refuse to use violence when it is the only means of preventing greater violence would be responsible for the greater violence they fail to prevent.”

— Peter Singer

189. “I guess basically one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?”

— Peter Singer

190. “Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the founders of The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, believes that singularity will lead to an “intelligence explosion” as super-intelligent machines design even more intelligent machines, with each generation repeating this process.”

— Peter Singer

191. “Whaling should stop because it brings needless suffering to social, intelligent animals capable of enjoying their own lives. But against the Japanese charge of cultural bias, Western nations will have little defense until they do much more about the needless animal suffering in their own countries.”

— Peter Singer

192. “If we think that democracy is a good thing, then we must believe that the public should know as much as possible about what the government it elects is doing. Snowden has said that he made the disclosures because “the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.”

— Peter Singer

193. “Everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty. Causing suffering to innocent beings without an extremely weighty reason for doing so is wrong, and hence whaling is unethical.”

— Peter Singer

194. “The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found.”

— Peter Singer