Peter Singer

“Every profession will have its rogues, of course, no matter what oaths are sworn, but many health care professionals have a real commitment to serving the best interests of their clients.”

“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.”

“Dolphins are social mammals, capable of enjoying their lives. They form close bonds with other members of their group.”

“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.”

“Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.”

“If people are prepared to eat locally and seasonally, then they probably do pretty well in terms of environmental impact.”

“What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.”

“We should aim for our children to be good people, and to live ethical lives that manifest concern for others as well as for themselves.”

“Interest in business ethics courses has surged, and student activities at leading business schools are more focused than ever before on making business serve long-term social values.”

“Animals, or at least those who are conscious and capable of suffering or enjoying their lives, are not things for us to use in whatever way we find convenient.”

“I believe that in this new world that we live in, we often have a responsibility, you know, to actually go beyond the thou shalt nots - that is, the not harming others - and say we can help others and we should be helping others.”

“To say that life is meaningless is to express an attitude, not to state a fact”

“My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.”

“The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.”

“Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.”

“I find it extraordinary that anyone would have an intellectual conversion to Roman Catholicism.”

“It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that's basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you're really stuck with them in some sense. You can't return them to the wild.”

“Grain that is used to feed animals that end up on our tables as turkeys and hams could have gone to feed starving people.”

“The idea that we can actually have an impact on places more or less instantly, too, by responding in some way or not responding, I think, also makes it true.”

“Knowing that we can control our own behaviour makes it more likely that we will.”