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"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."
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Exlpore more Possibility quotes
"We all know, intuitively, that if something is humanly possible, it is possible for ourselves."
"The possibility of saying anything about a thing rests on the assumption that it preserves its identity, or continues to be the same thing in the respect described, that it will behave in future situations as it has in past."
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
"And the idea of light unexplainably produced out of nothing was haunting, it shook me. A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible that weren't, and so anything-great and terrible-felt possible to me now."
"Training of female athletes is so new that the limits of female possibility are still unknown."
"The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility."
"The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment."
"One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen."
"Most of my recorded material has been in small group configurations. I have not released large orchestral works as recordings because it hasn't been within the realm of possibility."
Explore more quotes by Peter Singer
"We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product."
"I don't think there's anything in the compromise that means that there's a clash of ethics."
"The idea that we can actually have an impact on places more or less instantly, too, by responding in some way or not responding, I think, also makes it true."
"I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise."
"They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences."
"I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and thin what we ought to do about it."
"As we realise 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."
"I would just like to get him to think about these things; whether what's happening in Iraq is promoting the culture of life. The worry is that he is so certain that he know where he's going to lead the country."
"I'm not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy."
"The Pentagon said that these prisoners were kept in accordance with the Geneva Convention, and of course I was not reassured by that, but I couldn't prove that that was wrong; so we're clearer about that."
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