Cruelty Quotes - Page 21

• The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.

  John Cheever

  Men, Organization, Perfection

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• All of us in society are supposed to believe that cruelty to animals is wrong and that it is a good thing to prevent needless suffering. So if that is true, how can meat be acceptable under any but the most extraordinary circumstances, such as perhaps roasting the bird who died flying into a window?

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Believe, Animal, Bird

  "Let’s Face It: There Is No Such Thing as Humane Meat" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. Februry 26, 2013.

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• Since we can't count on the meat, egg, and dairy industries to protect animals from the most egregious forms of cruelty, what can we, as consumers, do? Opting out of paying someone to allow animals to die in a barn fire or at the slaughterhouse seems pretty reasonable.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Animal, Fire, Eggs

  "Here’s a Recipe for Roast Chicken Everyone Should Find Objectionable" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 23, 2012.

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• Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.

  Alice Walker

  Compassion, Balance, Equal

  Alice Walker (1997). “Possessing the Secret of Joy”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

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• I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.

  Josephine Baker

  Land, Democracy, France

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• So, in the infinitely nobler battle in which you are engaged against error and wrong, if ever repulsed or stricken down, may you always be solaced and cheered by the exulting cry of triumph over some abuse in Church or State, some vice or folly in society, some false opinion or cruelty or guilt which you have overcome! And I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

  Horace Mann

  Heart, Errors, Humanity

  Joy Elmer Morgan, Horace Mann, Eleanor Craven Fishburn (1938). “Horace Mann at Antioch”

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• There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I'm talking about, of course, is cat juggling.

  Steve Martin

  Cat, Animal, Thinking

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• What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Sensual, Stubborn

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• People who need therapy are in Afghanistan. They've seen horrible human cruelty and degradation, but they don't have time or the money for therapy.

  David Chase

  People, Needs, Degradation

  "TELEVISION; The Real Boss Of 'The Sopranos'". Interview with Virginia Heffernan, www.nytimes.com. February 29, 2004.

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• The health of the planet is at stake, because the cruelty and the waste that accompanies the slaughter of billions of animals each year literally infects us all. We could consume healthy plant-based food produced at almost infinitely less cost. What does that say, really, about us and what we're doing... to animals and to ourselves?

  James Cromwell

  Animal, Years, Healthy

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• I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Summer, Racism, Voters

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• Throughout the play everything possible was done to show the virtue, innocence and helplessness of the poor, and the abandoned cruelty, the heartless self-indulgence of the rich.

  Joyce Cary

  Heart, Self, Play

  Joyce Cary (1985). “Except the Lord”, p.87, New Directions Publishing

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• I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.

  Charles A. Beard

  Men, Challenges, Humanity

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• Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.

  Linda Chavez

  White, Rights, Violence

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• You want to free the world, free humanity, from oppression? Look inside, look sideways, look at the hidden violence of language. Never forget that language is where the other, parallel violence, the cruelty exercised on the body, originates.

  Ariel Dorfman

  Humanity, Looks, World

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• In my stories, I controlled what happened in a way I couldn't in real life. My characters lived through the horror and degradation of the cruelty of others and they not only survived, they thrived. They gave me hope and laughter, and they kept me going in spite of everything else. They were my heroes.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Laughter, Real, Hero

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• "From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius," Gibbon says again, "the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which the Jews committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives...In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus 240,000; in Egypt a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder..."

  Nesta Helen Webster

  Cities, Egypt, Rome

  Nesta Helen Webster (1921). “World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization”

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• The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

  Harry S. Truman

  Dog, Selfish, Past

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• Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.

  Susan Sontag

  Hands, Way, Moral

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.114, Macmillan

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• Reason cannot save us, nothing can; but reason can mitigate the cruelty of living.

  Philip Rieff

  Reason

  Philip Rieff (1979). “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist”, p.12, University of Chicago Press

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• Military weapons are the means used by the Sage to punish violence and cruelty, to give peace to troublous times, to remove difficulties and dangers, and to succor those who are in peril. Every animal with blood in its veins and horns on its head will fight when it is attacked. How much more so will man, who carries in his breast the faculties of love and hatred, joy and anger! When he is pleased, a feeling of affection springs up within him; when angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his being

  Sima Qian

  Spring, Military, War

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• In life and art, there are distinctions to be made between what an act of cruelty consists of.

  Maggie Nelson

  Art, Made, Distinction

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• The steady pressure to consume, absorb, participate, receive, by eye, ear, mouth, and mail involves a cruelty to intestines, blood pressure, and psyche unparalleled in history.

  Herbert Gold

  Eye, Blood, Ears

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• There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Justice, Feelings, Humanity

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.128

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

  Kedar Joshi

  God, Philosophy, Vanity

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