Quotes about Cruelty

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is -- whether its victim is human or animal -- we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.

Philosophy is the only excuse God has for his cruelty and vanity.

"I believe that there is only one story in the world...Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil...A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?"

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind.  He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

"The curse of our times is that even the best-intentioned people often do at least as much harm in the world as they do good and they do so over and over again, not even once noticing the foul stench of festering cruelty deposited in their trail."

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as to make up the state of our treats.

Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.

Oh cruel fate . . . why do you mock me?

Always remember, no one can debase you but yourself. Slander, satire, falsehood, injustice-these can never rob you of your manhood. Men may lie about you, they may denounce you, they may cherish suspicions manifold, they may make your failings the target of their wit or cruelty. Never be alarmed; never swerve an inch from the line your judgment and conscience have marked out for you. They cannot, by all their efforts, take away your knowledge of yourself, the purity of your character, and the generosity of your nature. While these are left, you are unharmed.

Back [in pre-Revolutionary America] "cruel and unusual punishment" meant the rack and burning at the stake . . . in more recent rulings [it has] been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.

. . . the cruelty that goes under the barbarous regime we call civilisation.

The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain....

Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?

All cruelty springs from weakness.

Pity is not natural to man. Children and savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; but we have not pity unless we wish to relieve him.

I have discovered that this world is harsh, cruel and nasty enough without writing off entire classes of individuals on the basis of their colour or national origin. There are enough people in the world who can be judged on the basis of their actions that we don't need to judge others merely on the basis of their colour or nationality.

Nature is not cruel, pitilessly, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous - indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.

Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

Cruelty is fed, not weakened by tears.