Efective Altruism Quotes

Here's a massive compilation of 170+ EA-relatable quotes I've been gathering for a couple months now (useful for, e.g. social media, writing).

Feel free to add new quotes and categories, make suggestions or link to other quote compilation threads/documents!

Here is a qoute to an important, awkward, and sometimes neglected question in effective altruism. I think Peter Singer answers it sufficiently and succinctly.

What if one’s act reduces suffering, but in order to act one must lie or harm an innocent person?

In general, effective altruists recognize that breaking moral rules against killing or seriously harming an innocent person will almost always have worse consequences than following these rules. Even thoroughgoing utilitarians, who judge actions to be right or wrong entirely on the basis of their consequences, are wary of speculative reasoning that suggests we should violate basic human rights today for the sake of some distant future good. They know that under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, a vision of a utopian future society was used to justify unspeakable atrocities, and even today some terrorists justify their crimes by imagining they will bring about a better future. No effective altruist wants to repeat those tragedies.”

• Peter Singer, The Logic of Effective Altruism, Boston Review

These quotes are a bit more general, but I find them deeply inspiring: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/charity-quotations

Mother, my little heart, in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Man, ethics is hard.

Robert Wiblin, executive director, Centre for Effective Altruism; research director, 80,000 Hours

"Whenever in the course of my life I have come across, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they have generally had the cheerful, practical, brusque and unemotioned air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, no fear of hurting it, the impassive, unsympathetic, sublime face of true goodness." ~ Marcel Proust

When it comes to doing good, fat-tailed distributions seem to be everywhere. It’s not always true that exactly 80 percent of the value comes from the top 20 percent of activities—sometimes things are even more extreme than that, and sometimes less. But the general rule that most of the value generated comes from the very best activities is very common.

-- William MacAskill, Doing Good Better

Has anyone else finished Nick Cooney's book? I thought it was excellent, like his others. I'd recommend it as something to give people new to EA.