Top 15 Richard D. Ryder Quotes

Ethics, as a rational enterprise, will often conflict with other, more negative, aspects of our natures and help to curb our natural impulses to conquer, compete, and kill. By putting morality back into politics and basing our policies upon our compassion and upon the sufferings of all individuals, regardless of their superficial differences, we should be able to build a happier future.

The implication of painism is that political policies should extend to individuals of all nations, races, and species on an 'equal pain equal treatment' basis.

What we should be concerned about is the happiness of individuals. Applying rights may be a rough and ready rule of thumb for doing this, but painism would be a far more accurate approach. It might require more detailed research into the consequences of policies on individuals but that, in principle, could be done. Indeed, to base public policy upon scientific findings would be a considerable step forward.

In judging who are the maximum sufferers politicians must, today, cast their eyes around the whole globe and take into account the sufferings of all races, religions and species.

Just as nobody pursues happiness in order to find anything other than happiness, so nobody strives to reduce pain to reduce anything other than pain. Pain is always at the end of the track: it is the ultimate and essential badness. 'Painful' and 'bad' are synonymous in the mind of the child and, at a basic level, in all our minds.

[The] habit of totalling pains and pleasures across individuals is one of the main errors in ethics today.

Are there then any moral foundations on which we can all agree, at least to some extent? I believe there are and that they are these: pain is bad, and so, causing unnecessary pain to others is wrong.

[W]hat, ultimately, should politics be aiming for? What is the underlying moral objective? … None of the traditional political ideals … provides a satisfactory moral basis for politics today.

[C]ertain moral imperatives are, rightly, considered to transcend national boundaries. What, after all, is so imperative about geography? Suffering is global.

A sound moral argument requires both factual and moral premises. Yet there has been little intelligent dialogue at either level. The mumbling of slogans must no longer suffice. We must demand more of our leaders …

Idealism itself can become dangerous. But going too far in the other direction, towards relativism, amoral expediency and opportunism, is equally perilous.

[P]olitical policy should be based, not upon mere opinion, nor upon a set of knee jerk reflexes, but upon a scientific concern for the facts and an intelligent and open moral argument.

We have an obligation to try to reduce the pains of others, wherever they are, and however the pains have been caused.

Perhaps there is too much talk of justice, equality and liberty in political philosophy, and not enough about suffering. It is suffering that matters morally …

Their experiences may be more simple than ours, but are they less intense? Perhaps a caterpillar’s primitive pain when squashed is greater than our more sophisticated sufferings.