List of Peter Singer Quotes

There Are A Lot Of Weapons That We've Developed Which We've Pulled Back From - Biological Weapons, Chemical Weapons, Etc. This May Be The Case With Armed Autonomous Robotics, Where We Ultimately Pull Back From Them.

Sci-fi Is Often A Metaphor. I Think It's More The Themes And Questions That Science Fiction Raises Rather Than The Exact Predictions That Should Guide Us.

We Wait Until Pandora's Box Is Opened Before We Say, "wow, Maybe We Should Understand What's In That Box." This Is The Story Of Humans On Every Problem.

When You Look At Food As An Ethical Issue In The Christian Tradition, You Don't Find Very Much About It. You Don't Find, As You Do In The Jewish Or Islamic Or Hindu Traditions, A Lot Of Restrictions Saying You Can Eat This But You Can't Eat That. But What You Do Find Is The Idea That Gluttony Is A Sin And That It's Something That We Ought To Be Ashamed Of.

Each Of Us Spends Money On Things That We Do Not Really Need. You Could Take The Money You're Spending On Those Unnecessary Things And Give It To This Organization The Against Malaria Foundation Which Would Take The Money You Had Given And Use It To Buy Nets To Protect Children. And We Know Reliably That If We Provide Nets, They're Used, And They Reduce The Number Of Children Dying From Malaria. Fortunately More And More People Are Understanding This Idea, And The Result Is A Growing Movement Effective Altruism.

We Certainly Would Resolve The Problems Of The Charities That Are Working In Areas Where They Can Do The Most Good. So If You Consider That The U.s. Foreign Aid Budget Is 30 Billion, Yes, We Could Make A Major Contribution To Reducing Global Poverty, Start To Deal Much Better With Some Of The Other Big Environmental Problems That The World Faces. So I Think We Could Solve A Lot Of Problems.

There Is An Obvious Evolutionary Explanation For The Scarcity Of Altruistic Saints: Without A Strong Predilection For Their Own Interests, Our Ancestors Would Have Been Unlikely To Survive, Reproduce, And Give Their Own Offspring A Chance Of Doing The Same. Now Conditions Have Changed And For Most Of Us, Surviving And Reproducing Isn't Such A Struggle But We Still Carry The Genes Of Our Ancestors And They Influence - Not Determine, But Influence - Our Behavior.

After 9/11, The American Red Cross Received More Than Half A Billion Dollars In Donations To Help The Victims Of The Terrorist Attacks. The Families Of The Victims Were Already Well-provided For By Various Government Funds, So Red Cross Simply Drew A Line Across Lower Manhattan And Offered Everyone There Financial Assistance, Whether They Needed It Or Not.

I Know Of A Number Of People Who Are Successfully Earning To Give. That Isn't For Everyone But For Those With The Ability To Earn A Lot Of Money And The Character To Resist The Temptation To Spend It On Themselves, It Can Be A Great Way To Do Good.

I Don't See How Anyone Could Really Think That If You Have A Choice Between Saving The Life Of One Person And Saving The Lives Of A Million People, To Say - Well, I've Saved The One - Can You Really Take That Seriously? I Can't.

There Are Many Cases In Which Gifted Children Have Done Great Things Without Special School Programs. There Are Also Gifted Kids Who Have Been To Special Schools And Achieved Nothing That Has Benefited The World As A Whole. Without Solid Evidence, I Have No Confidence That Funding School Programs For The Intellectually Gifted Would Do More Good Than The Most Cost-effective Programs To Help People In Extreme Poverty.

Charitable Giving Is A Huge Sector In The United States. It Amounts To $350 Billion A Year. And Yet, I Can't Help Feeling That A Lot Of That Is Wasted Because People Have Not Been Thinking About How To Do It As Effectively As Possible.