Thomas Pogge Quotes

#1. Medicines are unusual commodities. Important drugs can save the lives and protect the health of millions. Their consumption can bring huge benefits, by helping patients to avoid infection and preventing serious damage to the economies of families, nations and even humanity at large.

Thomas Pogge

#2. Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.

Thomas Pogge

#3. The stunning thing about the world as it is, is that we have a tremendously large problem in it: namely, one-third of all human deaths, 80-million every year from poverty-related causes, trivial diseases and so on, and stunningly, nobody is really paying attention to it.

Thomas Pogge

#4. We citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss our obligations toward the distant needy mainly in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution: How much of our wealth, if any, should we give away to the hungry abroad?

Thomas Pogge

#5. It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.

Thomas Pogge

#6. By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents.

Thomas Pogge

#7. If I were surrounded by angels who were purely rational and had no inclinations at all, I couldn't do anything for them. I couldn't make them happy; I couldn't make them sad, I would be entirely useless as a moral agent.

Thomas Pogge