Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
Peter SingerTake for example providing a guide dog for a blind person. That's a good thing to do, right? All right. It is a good thing to do. But you have to think what else you could do with the resources. It costs about $40,000 to train a guide dog and train the recipient so that the guide dog can be an effective help to a blind person. It costs somewhere between 20 and $50 to cure a blind person in a developing country if they have trachoma. So you do the sums, and you could provide one guide dog for one blind American or you could cure between 400 and 2,000 people of blindness.
Peter SingerThere are some circumstances, for example, where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it's better that child should not live, when killing the newborn baby is not at all wrong ... not like killing the chimpanzee would be.
Peter SingerShould one break in and free the animals? That is illegal, but the obligation to obey the law is not absolute. It was justifiably broken by those who helped runaway slaves in the American South, to mention only one possible parallel.
Peter SingerAll the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals.
Peter SingerIn the past 20 years alone, it adds up to more death than were caused by all the civil and international wars adn government repression of the entire twentieth century, the century of Hitler and Stalin. How much would we give to prevent those horrors? Yet how little are we doing to prevent today's even larger toll and all the misery that it involves? I believe that if you read this book to the end, and look honestly and carefully at our situation, assessing both the facts and the ethical arguments, you will agree that we must act.
Peter Singer