Peter Singer Quotes

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.

Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes.

Why are we here? We exist not to pursue happiness, which is fleeting, or outer accomplishment, which can always be bettered. We are here to nourish the self.

The finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest amongst the moderns.

We know next to nothing with any certainty about Pythagoras, except that he was not really called Pythagoras. The name by which he is known to us was probably a nickname bestowed by his followers. According to one source, it meant ‘He who spoke truth like an oracle’. Rather than entrust his mathematical and philosophical ideas to paper, Pythagoras is said to have expounded them before large crowds. The world’s most famous mathematician was also its first rhetorician.

It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.

There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.

There is no new knowledge, all is ancient and infinite

destruction is ultimately self-destruction.

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Success, I would find out, is interior. It has to do with self-fulfillment and the joy of living.

If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.

I am the self-consumer of my woes.

Listen, after almost twenty years of call-in radio, I can tell you that the main thrust of too many lives is an overemphasis on feeling good instead of doing good. Being admired and respected by the self and others has taken a back seat to feeling good, or, at least, avoiding feeling bad. And, oh boy, the excuses some of you can come up with for doing so!

I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God—I mean, that’s one way to look at it—we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

If it makes you happy it can't be that bad