“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, quote from Animal Liberation
“If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“People may hope that the meat they buy came from an animal who died without pain, but they do not really want to know about it. Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed do not deserve to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“I would not question the sincerity of vegetarians who take little interest in Animal Liberation because they give priority to other causes; but when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“The prescription of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“By ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make so much extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. 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, or 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, quote from Animal Liberation
“As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“It takes twenty-one pounds of protein fed to a calf to produce a single pound of animal protein for humans. We get back less than 5 percent of what we put in.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“The plucked and dressed bodies of the chickens will then be sold to millions of families who will gnaw on their bones without pausing for an instant to think that they are eating the dead body of a once living creature, or to ask what was done to that creature in order to enable them to buy and eat its body.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“The unchallenged assumption is that humans may use animals for their own purposes, and they may raise and kill them to satisfy their preference for a diet containing animal flesh.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“...it is in the rightness of our cause, and not the fear of our bombs, that our prospects of victory lie.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“Until we boycott meat, and all other products of animal factories, we are, each one of us, contributing to the continued existence, prosperity, and growth of factory farming and all the other cruel practices used in rearing animals for food.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“We think of lions and wolves as savage because they kill; but they must kill, or starve. Humans kill other animals for sport, to satisfy their curiosity, to beautify their bodies, and to please their palates.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“What we must do is bring nonhuman animals within our sphere of moral concern and cease to treat their lives as expendable for whatever trivial purposes we may have.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“But pain is pain, and the importance of preventing unnecessary pain and suffering does not diminish because the being”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“say that people are “humane” is to say that they are kind; to say that they are “beastly,” “brutal,” or simply that they behave “like animals” is to suggest that they are cruel and nasty. We rarely stop to consider that the animal who kills with the least reason to do so is the human animal. We think of lions and wolves as savage because they kill; but they must kill, or starve. Humans kill other animals for sport, to satisfy their curiosity, to beautify their bodies, and to please their palates. Human beings also kill members of their own species for greed or power. Moreover, human beings are not content with mere killing. Throughout history they have shown a tendency to torment and torture both their fellow human beings and their fellow animals before putting them to death. No other animal shows much interest in doing this. While”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case. Most”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“Unless you can refute the central argument of this book, you should now recognize that speciesism is wrong, and this means that, if you take morality seriously, you should try to eliminate speciesist practices from your own life, and oppose them elsewhere. Otherwise no basis remains from which you can, without hypocrisy, criticize racism or sexism.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“So the researcher’s central dilemma exists in an especially acute form in psychology: either the animal is not like us, in which case there is no reason for performing the experiment; or else the animal is like us, in which case we ought not to perform on the animal an experiment that would be considered outrageous if performed on one of us. Another”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet—for the sake of hamburgers.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“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, quote from Animal Liberation
“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, quote from Animal Liberation
“Should thousands of animals suffer so that a new kind of lipstick or floor wax can be put on the market?”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“If the foundations of an ideological position are knocked out from under it, new foundations will be found, or else the ideological position will just hang there, defying the logical equivalent of the laws of gravity.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
Peter Singer
Born place: in Melbourne, Australia
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“But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“It was a long time before I realized that you don't have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to write badly, to get it wrong, stop looking over your own shoulder.”
― quote from A Three Dog Life
“Unbelievable. I’m in a fucking Outside Context situation, the ship thought, and suddenly felt as stupid and dumb-struck as any muddy savage confronted with explosives or electricity.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Excession
“beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
“My guilt was firm in their minds the moment my name was called, the moment my tongue was cut.”
― Julie Berry, quote from All the Truth That's in Me
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Avoiding CommitmentBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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