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Peter Singer: 108 quotes15 likes

“[One thing] underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals. This one thing is that we take responsibility for our own lives, and make them as free of cruelty as we can. The first step is that we cease to eat animals. Many people who are opposed to cruelty to animals draw the line at becoming a vegetarian. It was of such people that Oliver Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century humanitarian essayist, wrote: "They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion."”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

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

Peter Singer

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 69

“When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true…. 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

p. 238 http://books.google.com/books?id=BoDMBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT238 <br class="br">Writings on an Ethical Life (2000)

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

Peter Singer

Afterword To The 2011 Edition, p. 187
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

“Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the “sanctity of life” view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals—so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the “sanctity of human life” view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

“The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 6: Speciesism Today

“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

“To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed… It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.”

Peter Singer

Quoted by Michael Specter on the impact of the book Animal Liberation, " The Dangerous Philosopher http://www.michaelspecter.com/1999/09/the-dangerous-philosopher/", The New Yorker, 6 September 1999.

“Ethics is inescapable.”

Peter Singer

Preface, p. xv
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)

Peter Singer

... 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. <br class="br"> p. 238 http://books.google.com/books?id=BoDMBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT238 <br class="br">Writings on an Ethical Life (2000)

“One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today’s factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.”

Peter Singer book The Most Good You Can Do

Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)

“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 book The Most Good You Can Do

Source: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015), Chapter 9: Altruism and Happiness (p. 103)

“Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.”

Peter Singer book The Most Good You Can Do

Preface (p. vii)
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015)

“The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”

Peter Singer

Source: The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (2017), p. 343