If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals.

When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that.

If extreme poverty is allowed to increase, it will give rise to new problems, including new diseases that will spread from countries that cannot provide adequate healthcare to those that can. Poverty will lead to more migrants seeking to move, whether legally or not, to rich nations.

Americans think they're the leader of the world and yet can say that they're putting their economic interests ahead of the lives of - quite possibly - tens of millions of people who over the next 50 years will die because of floods or storms or tropical diseases or whatever. I guess that sort of thing makes me angry.

What you could say, and what I do argue in the book, is that he doesn't have as much concern for the lives of Iraqis as he does for the lives of Americans, or even frozen American embryos.

Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.

We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely - or, if that is not possible, to find less cruel and more sustainable alternatives to eating them.

If people are prepared to eat locally and seasonally, then they probably do pretty well in terms of environmental impact.

Grain that is used to feed animals that end up on our tables as turkeys and hams could have gone to feed starving people.

What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.

As we realize 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.

But I think the majority of cows, and even more so chickens and pigs, are leading pretty miserable lives.

I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.

Robots already perform many functions, from making cars to defusing bombs - or, more menacingly, firing missiles. Children and adults play with toy robots, while vacuum-cleaning robots are sucking up dirt in a growing number of homes and - as evidenced by YouTube videos - entertaining cats.

Every profession will have its rogues, of course, no matter what oaths are sworn, but many health care professionals have a real commitment to serving the best interests of their clients.

To make sustainable progress in reducing extreme poverty will require improvements in both the quantity and quality of aid.

Most of the robots being developed for home use are functional in design - Gecko's homecare robot looks rather like the Star Wars robot R2-D2. Honda and Sony are designing robots that look more like the same movie's 'android' C-3PO.

We tend to think that people are more to blame for their acts than for their omissions.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.