“The price we are willing to pay for safety cannot be infinite. It is distasteful to put a price on human life, but the more we spend on safety, the less we will have for our other goals.”

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Meaning

This reads as a warning that safety can be pursued without limit, and that every extra layer of protection takes resources away from other human aims. It can be taken to mean that moral life involves trade offs, even around life and death, and that insisting on perfect security can become its own kind of harm. It lands in debates about public policy, where spending more on one risk means less for health, education, or other needs.

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Originally said in English.

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About Peter Singer

Australian moral philosopher

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, best known for his work in applied ethics and for shaping modern debates about animal welfare and global poverty. He is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His book Animal Liberation, published in 1975, criticized intensive animal farming and speciesism and helped shape the animal rights movement. He is also known for "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," which argues that people have a moral duty to help the global poor, and for later books including The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do, which influenced the effective altruism movement. He has worked from a secular, utilitarian perspective throughout much of his career.

More from Peter Singer (154 quotes) →

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Books by Peter Singer

Ethics in the Real World

2016

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Pushing Time Away

2004

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Animal Liberation

2001

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