36 quotes
If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Since ancient times, philosophers have maintained that to strive too hard for one's own happiness is self-defeating.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
There is a growing movement called effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.
The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
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 for the same purpose?
The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
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 that we hold.
Practical Ethics, 3rd Edition (2011)
Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015)
We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we could have prevented.
Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate-change, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981)
I am a utilitarian. I am also a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian because I am a utilitarian.
Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975)
Speciesism—the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975)