Cruelty Quotes - Page 29

• There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? ... Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Religious, Sacrifice, Fate

  "Beyond Good and Evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche, Chapter III, Aphorism 55, 1886.

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• The vast carnival of cruelty called animal exploitation goes on and on - and it is all so needless, even counter-productive. There is already an adequate (often superior) non-animal substitute for virtually everything obtained by animal suffering and slaughter.

  H. Jay Dinshah

  Animal, Suffering, Goes On

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• It may here be observed, that all who are offended by us are exposed to our view. But the rich man sees Lazarus not with any other righteous man, but in Abraham's bosom. For Abraham was full of love, but the man is convicted of cruelty. Abraham sitting before his door followed after those that passed by, and brought them into his house, the other turned away even them that abode within his gate.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Men, Doors, Views

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• Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.

  David Hume

  Revenge, Praise, Inhumanity

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• Don't overlook the significance of your smallest opportunities for civilized behavior throughout each day. The future has no bigger moments than we experience right now. The world changes for the better with every act of kindness, and for the worse with every act of cruelty. The future is nothing grander than the very next moment, and it arrives solely from the present.

  Bo Lozoff

  Kindness, Opportunity, Each Day

  Bo Lozoff (2001). “It's a Meaningful Life: It Just Takes Practice”, p.96, Penguin

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• Beauty is cruel, cruelty is beautiful.

  Kate Cann

  Beautiful

  Kate Cann (2011). “Possessed”, p.97, Scholastic Inc.

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• All pity choked with custom of fell deeds.

  William Shakespeare

  War, Deeds, Anarchy

  William Shakespeare (1996). “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, p.597, Wordsworth Editions

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• My work is basically an outgrowth of the anger I feel about the human condition. The aspects of it that make me angry are our capacity for cruelty and the ability people have to ignore situations they don't like.

  Bruce Nauman

  People, Capacity, Aspect

  Bruce Nauman, Christine van Assche, Cristina Ricupero, Hayward Gallery (1998). “Bruce Nauman”

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• What's shocking is cruelty and torture, and that's become our entertainment. Kids can play violent video games, but God forbid they look at a naked woman. That's pornography, that's perverse. No!

  David LaChapelle

  Kids, Games, Play

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• In mass cruelty, the expulsions of Germans ordered by the Russians fall not very far short of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Atrocities, Nazi

  Bertrand Russell (1944). “Pamphlets: The value of free thought; Ideas that have harmed mankind; Ideas that have helped mankind; The faith of a rationalist”

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• Who can describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the course of centuries the peoples of color of the world have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... We and our civilization are burdened, really, with a great debt. We are not free to confer benefits on these men, or not, as we please; it is our duty. Anything we give them is not benevolence but atonement.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Men, Hands, Color

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• Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease...

  Robert Kennedy

  Adventure, Yield, Imagination

  Robert F. Kennedy's Day of Affirmation Address at the University of Capetown, South Africa, www.mtholyoke.edu. June 6, 1966.

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• Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.

  April Gornik

  Real, Fighting, Animal

  "Our Real Wealth" by April Gornik, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 14, 2010.

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• Violence is the tool of the barbarian; aggression is the method of the primitive; bloodshed is the way of the savage; cruelty is the manner of the brutish! To be called as a 'civilised,' man must be peaceable!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Men, Savages, Tools

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• The profound immoralities of our time are cruelty, indifference, injustice and the use of others as means rather than ends in themselves.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Mean, Profound, Use

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don't belong - just when the options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.

  Jack Welch

  Children, Kindness, College

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• Inordinate love for the flesh is cruelty, because under the appearance of pleasing the body, we kill the soul.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  Soul, Body, Flesh

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• Cruelty is like hope: it springs eternal.

  Anthony Daniels

  Spring, Eternal

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• I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.

  Clarence Darrow

  Kindness, Charity, Might

  A Plea for Mercy, delivered September 1924

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• In my judgment, the Deists were all successfully answered. The god of nature is certainly as bad as the God of the Old Testament. It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bear with patience the ills of life. I feel that I am neither a favorite nor a victim. Nature neither loves nor hates me.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Hate, Ideas, Able

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2176, Library of Alexandria

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• The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.

  Sigmund Freud

  Fate, Men, Suffering

  Sigmund Freud, Scientific Literature Corporation (1961). “The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud”

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• There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Facts, Degrees, Compliment

  Sinclair Lewis (2017). “It Can't Happen Here”, p.235, Penguin UK

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• A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness.

  Edward Gibbon

  Character, Law, Justice

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.3359, e-artnow

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• Cruelties should be committed all at once.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Should, Committed

  Gerald Lee Ratliff, Niccolo Machiavelli (1986). “Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince”, p.48, Barron's Educational Series

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• Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Compassion, Opposites, Feelings

  Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1995). “On the Basis of Morality”, p.169, Hackett Publishing

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