“All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.”
- Peter Singer
“An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.”
“Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn't do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years.”
“As we realize that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest.”
“At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.”
“Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.”
“Bush is morally a universalist. For instance, he says the freedom is good, the same thing is good, all over the world. So in that sense he's a universalist.”
“Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values.”
“Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which parts of the world we want to be in immediate contact with.”
“I believe that nationalism is a very strong force, but there are other forces operating; there are tendencies pushing towards a larger picture, especially in Europe, I think; but I still think nationalism is real.”
“I don't think nationalism is alone holding the field; it's in contention with a lot of different things.”
“I don't think there's anything in the compromise that means that there's a clash of ethics.”
“I don't think there's much point in bemoaning the state of the world unless there's some way you can think of to improve it. Otherwise, don't bother writing a book; go and find a tropical island and lie in the sun.”
“I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture.”
