Peter Singer Quotes

European countries give much larger shares of aid for poverty relief than the U.S.

The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money

There is no country on earth that has done more for our own poor and for the poor around the world. We are not the ones that need to be targeted.

If you think creating a world without any poverty is impossible, let's do it. Because it is the right thing to do.

I don't think anybody really thinks that one should get rid of the World Bank. Reform is one thing, but getting rid of it I think would be wrong.

It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations.

We spend billions on banks when we know that a fraction of this money could save all the children in the world.

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.

Yes, we see that there are problems in the world. But we believe in a universal force that, when activated by the human heart, has the power to make all things right.

I spent almost 25 years as a foreign correspondent, and the world's primary problem is poverty.

Foreign aid must be viewed as an investment, not an expense.

We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule.

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce.

There are people all over the world starving and here we are trying to get pot delivered for free; we felt kind of guilty.

[On charity] I try to pick subjects that I can learn about and then focus on and then do as much as I can. If you have a tremendous amount of heat from the spotlight, then you're able to shine a little bit more of your light in a different direction. It's just deflecting. My dad calls it a celebrity credit card that you can cash in. I think if you're in this position you should do it.

Oftentimes people ask me, 'Why is it that you're so focused on helping the hungry and diseased in strange parts of the world?'

The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis.

Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

When we work all over the planet, it's mostly poor and black and brown and young people, because that's mostly what the world [environmentalism] is.

I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things.

The only really effective means of enabling States to deal with the grave problem of poverty is to provide them with the necessary resources through foreign financial aid - public and private - granted under reasonable conditions, within the framework of international commercial relations regulated with fairness.

If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today.

It is perfectly consistent - and also true - to say that the world poverty problem today is smaller (relative to world population) than before and yet also a much graver injustice.

I think we've got to understand the complexity of the world that we are facing and no place is more so than in the Middle East.

Thinking about the world writ large, I am more optimistic than not that we will tackle our most pressing challenges, whether poverty or equality for women and girls or climate change; but I also know we'll only tackle them if people are really informed about the challenge and what's proven to work.