Peter Singer Quotes on Virtue
Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and the most widely read utilitarian writer of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This page collects quotes attributed to Peter Singer on the topic of virtue, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“All animals are equal: the principle of equality requires that suffering be considered equally with the like suffering of any other being.”
Speciesism —the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species. -
“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.”
Famine, Affluence, and Morality -
Attributed to Peter Singer:
“An ethical life is one in which we identify ourselves with other, larger goals.”
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“The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.”
The God of Suffering? Project Syndicate , 2008 -
“Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.”
Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins , 2009.