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Book: Practical Ethics
Quotes of Book: Practical Ethics
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  1. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    That those who aim at happiness for happiness's sake often fail to find it, whereas others find happiness in pursuing altogether different goals, has been called 'the paradox of hedonism'. It is not, of course, a logical paradox but a claim about the way in which we come to be happy. Like other generalizations on this subject, it lacks empirical confirmation. Yet it matches our everyday observations and is consistent with our nature as evolved, purposive beings. Human beings survive and reproduce themselves through purposive action. We obtain happiness and fulfillment by working towards and achieving our goals. In evolutionary terms, we could say that happiness functions as an internal reward for our achievements. Subjectively, we regard achieving the goal {or progressing towards it} as a reason for happiness. Our own happiness, therefore, is a by-product of aiming at something else and is not to be obtained by setting our sights on happiness alone.
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  2. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    Our own happiness, therefore, is a by-product of aiming at something else and is not to be obtained by setting our sights on happiness alone.
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  3. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.
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  4. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    Dairy farmers routinely remove calves from their mothers at an early age so that the milk will be available for humans; anyone who has lived on a dairy farm will know that, for days after the calves have gone, their mothers keep calling for them.
    book-quotephilosophy-of-lifemoralityethics

  5. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    To argue against abortion on the grounds that it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world is implicitly to condemn practices that reduce the future human population: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural' means such as abstinence on days when the woman is likely to be fertile, and also celibacy. This argument does not provide any reason for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument provides no reason at all against abortion.
    book-quotephilosophymoralityethics

  6. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    In fact, the Nazis did not have a euthanasia program, in the proper sense of the word. Their so-called euthanasia program was not motivated by concern for the suffering of those killed. If it had been, they would not have kept their operations secret, deceived relatives about the cause of death of those killed, or exempted from the program certain privileged classes, such as veterans of the armed services or relatives of the euthanasia staff. Nazi 'euthanasia' was never voluntary and often was involuntary rather than nonvoluntary. 'Doing away with useless mouths' – a phrase used by those in charge – gives a better idea of the objectives of the program than 'mercy-killing'. Both racial origin and ability to work were among the factors considered in the selection of patients to be killed. It was the Nazi belief in the importance of maintaining a pure Aryan Volk – a quasi-mystical racist concept that was thought of as more important than mere individuals' lives – that made both the so-called euthanasia program and later the entire holocaust possible. Proposals for the legalization of euthanasia, on the other hand, are based on respect for autonomy and the goal of avoiding pointless suffering.
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  7. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    To explain our conventional ethical attitudes, is not to justify them.
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  8. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    We have an obligation to help those in absolute poverty that is no less strong than our obligation to rescue a drowning child from a pond.
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  9. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    The world does produce enough to feed its inhabitants – in fact we waste vast quantities of grain and soybeans by feeding them to animals, getting back from the animals only a small fraction of the nutritional value of the plant foods we put into them.
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  10. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    Population growth is not a reason against giving aid but a reason for reconsidering the kind of aid to give.
    book-quoteethicsglobal-warming

  11. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    Climate change is already causing, every week, as many deaths as occurred in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
    book-quoteethicsglobal-warming

  12. Peter Singer _ Practical Ethics

    the idea that there are objective ethical truths that are independent ofwhat anyone desires.
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