Peter Singer

Peter Singer was born in 1946 in Melbourne, Australia. He studied the University of Melbourne, where he earned both a BA and an MA in philosophy. In 1969 he attended the University of Oxford, where he received his B.Phil. degree two years later. Over the course of his long career, Singer has become one of the leading bioethicists and one of the founders of the animal rights movement.

In 2004 he was honored as the Australian Humanist of the Year. Shortly after receiving this distinctionr, Time magazine included Singer on its famous list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

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"You might hold an ethical position that it’s wrong to lie, but if you have plans for a war in Iraq, and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons – to reduce casualties, perhaps – and someone asks you about those plans, you may need to lie for a ‘good’ outcome."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): War
"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
Topic(s): Society
"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
Topic(s): Religion
"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
Topic(s): Respect
"I don’t understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It’s a pretty gross interference with nature."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): Nature
"I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don’t blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for, because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): Money
"For example, one way of giving yourself a strong incentive to reach your goal is to commit to pay money to someone if you fail. Better yet, you can specify that you will have to pay a certain sum to a cause that you detest."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): Money
"We have a new generation of very rich people who want to do more with their money than buy a lot of expensive toys. They want to live meaningful lives."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): Money
"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
Topic(s): Money
"The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done."
― Peter Singer
Topic(s): Hope

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