Best 440 quotes in «cruelty quotes» category

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. - On Religion

[Men] act in response to an outward situation, and on being presented with an opportunity to conform to a pattern. If the pattern gives licence to cruelty, so much the better. They take advantage of the licence so thoughtlessly, so thoroughly, that it becomes perfectly clear: the generality of mankind are only waiting for the chance, only waiting for outward circumstance to sanction brutality and allow them to be cruel and brutal to their heart's content.

Men like that — when they know they won’t be found out — they will do anything.

Mfalme Sulemani alikuwa mtu mwenye hekima kuliko wote ulimwenguni. Anatushauri, “Adui yako akiwa ana njaa, mpe chakula; Tena akiwa ana kiu, mpe maji ya kunywa; Maana utatia makaa ya moto kichwani pake; Na BWANA atakupa thawabu (Mithali 25:21-22). Yesu anasema jambo fulani linalofanana sana na hilo katika mafundisho Yake yaliyofuata (Mathayo 5:44-45). Kitendo cha kutukanwa, kupigwa, kushtakiwa au kulazimishwa kubeba mzigo mzito usio wa kwako kinaweza kusababisha mafutu mabaya kabisa katika asili ya binadamu. Yaani, chuki, hasira, ukatili na hata vurugu. Lakini pale wale waliobarikiwa kuwa na hekima wanapojikuta katika majaribu makubwa kama hayo tabia yao haitakiwi kuwa ya shari, inda au ya kulipiza kisasi. Bali inatakiwa kuwa ya kusaidia, kuwa na ridhaa ya kutenda mambo mema, na kuwa mwema kwa wengine siku zote.

Mitleid mit den Thieren hängt mit der Güte des Charakters so genau zusammen, daß man zuversichtlich behaupten darf, wer gegen Thiere grausam ist, könne kein guter Mensch seyn.

Morality often manifests itself as cruelty, So be very kind before you are moral.

Much of the local population had fled countries under siege, in the midst of war, and had not expected to find such artillery used against citizens of the United States.

My mother always tells me that anyone who gets enjoyment from other people's misery will eventually get the greatest discomfort from his or her own miseries.

My Ten Commandments: 1. God is a verb, not a noun. 2. Prayers are important only if they lead to corresponding actions. 3. Creation is an art. Science provides the tools for the artist. Anybody with the tools is not necessarily an artist. 4. Religion involves exclusivity and superiority. Divinity is inclusive and involves humility. 5. God by definition should be omnipotent. He should not require intermediation by priests and prophets. 6. All prophets have displayed exclusivity and superiority. (Refer to #4 above) 7. Rituals involve intermediation and often cruelty towards other fellows of creation. 8. Inclusivity and humility towards all creations of God is divine. 9. Rituals are antithesis of the divine. Rituals indicate a god and his intermediaries who are greedy, arrogant, revengeful and cruel. 10. God exists only for increasing happiness of all creatures.

My mother always says that indifference is the greatest cruelty.

Nature, with its paradoxical twin firmaments of breathtaking beauty and extreme cruelty, never explains itself and cares even less for our admiration and acceptance.

No decent person deliberately chooses to be violent or cruel. We must remove our blinkers and learn that in order to live according to our true values, we need to stop viewing animals as commodities to be used, abused and killed for our own selfish benefit.

Nobody should have to choose between a cold heart and a dead heart.

No, it really isn't, but trust me, getting divorced and having to start over is the least in life that isn't fair. I had to watch the parents of a way too young girl realize that their daughter died for no other reason than people can't figure out how to be nice to each other. It isn't that hard, just be nice and people might not have to suffer needlessly, but that isn't the world we live in, so young girls die. That isn't fair, Mom. People falling out of love is vicious and it sucks, but there are far worse things you could be going through. I know that sounds harsh but it's very true.

Of all mankind's unpleasant habits, sheer and willful cruelty is the most base, the least forgivable and, when carried to its extreme, perhaps the most horrific.

No organization can stay uncorrupt for long, be it a political party, a religious institution or a charity foundation - sooner or later the instinctual evils of greed and cruelty overwhelm the organization, fueled by its authoritative control over people.

No, we aren't civilized, even in our business suits and high heels. People are as mean as ever, and as predictable. Underneath it all, we are not so different from what lurks in the wild, perhaps we're worse.

Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the [Civil] war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable -- which I need not discuss today -- it changed the world. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the calloused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed? We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we rejoiced in it -- if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy -- what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.

No, you listen! All my life, you've told me that the world is a dark, cruel place. But now I see that the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like you!

Offer a man something he's starved for, suddenly take it away, and watch hell ensue.

(...) ograniczenie umysłowe i okrucieństwo ludzkie nie zna granic.

Old people deserves a medal, a medal of existence which crowns their long-term victory against the cruelty of time and the dangers of this chaotic universe!

None of the characters in (the story) were distinguished ones -- not even the lion. He was an old lion, prepared from birth to lose his life rather than to leave it. But he had the dignity of all free creatures, and so he was allowed his moment. It was hardly a glorious moment. The two men who shot him were indifferent as men go, or perhaps they were less than that. At least they shot him without killing him, and then turned the unsconscionable eye of a camera upon his agony. It was a small, a stupid, but a callous crime.

…one of those dreadful boarding schools. It was down on the South Coast. I think some very unpleasant things happened there…. So many lives were distorted by such cruelty. I know so many men who had to put up with that, so many….

One man's ugliness can blind another to the world's magic.

One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn’t stop. And when I finally did stop, I’d expended all this energy and frustration, and I’m thinking what in God’s sweet name did I do.

On reflection, it is clear why the world’s great religions specifically and clearly protect anymals from cruelty at the hands of humanity—we are more powerful, and human beings have demonstrated across time that we are likely to exploit and abuse anymals for our purposes. Anymals depend on special religious protections to protect them against an often self-absorbed humanity. Indeed, even in light of this strong collection of core religious teachings on behalf of anymals, they remain the most cruelly abused and widely exploited individuals throughout the industrialized world, and beyond.

Only small men parade their learning, talk over their audience and air their superior knowledge. Only brutal men throw their strength about, and vain rich men display their wealth in ostentatious useless luxuries.

On War – At the end, here is the only real statement either side can use: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Oppenheimer was lamenting the subservience of science to innate human cruelty in an address to the American Philosophical Society: “We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world ... a thing that by all the standards of the world we grew up in is an evil thing. And by so doing ... we have raised again the question of whether science is good for man.” This public admission of personal despair at the moral collapse of the modern world’s leading intellectual enterprise could not be more nakedly penitent.

Ordinary men wonder why those of only average intelligence so often rise to the highest levels of power, while highly intelligent people generally do not. They fail to understand that reaching the highest levels of power has nothing to do with admired attributes such as intelligence and competence. The predominant characteristic of those who rise to the highest levels of power is a total disregard for the consequences – including death – that will befall thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human beings if it is deemed necessary to attain his (or her) goals. Generally speaking, it is this total disregard for humanity that has distinguished ‘rulers’ throughout history.

Out there was a man who had murdered his daughter. And another who had stepped on her heart. His hatred should be aimed at the one who killed her, but all he could picture was Yoshino being literally kicked out of that car.

Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' everyone must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.' The nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenceless creature on its weeping, on its 'meek eyes.' The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action- it's awful in Nekrassov. But that only a horse, and God has horses to be beaten.

People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.

People often speak of hell, not wanting to go there, avoiding it..etc. I never had that problem because hell is a state of mind. Look around you; rape, murder, wars, hatred, envy...my friend; you're already there!!

People talk sometimes of 'bestial' cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beast; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically, so artfully cruel.

People. They're really innately, inherently gentle and compassionate and kind. That's what wrings, wrenches...something. Your entrails, maybe. The member of the mob who holds up the whole ceremony for seconds or even minutes while he dislodges a family of bugs or lizards from the log he is about to put on the fire.

Personally, I believe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I'd rather use film cameras and vinyl records and cathode ray tubes than any sort of the digital technology available. Look around! The streets are full of people who would rather have their eyes on their cell phones than on the world around them! Scientists are researching technology to erase specific memories from people! Our thrown-away digital technology is showing up overseas in huge piles of toxic heavy metals and plastic! And yet there are still people who keep wanting technology and the future to keep going. They dream of flying cars, or humanoid robots, of populated cities on Mars. But do we really NEED this stuff? Maybe before we try to keep turning our world into an episode of The Jetsons, we should focus more on the problems that are surprisingly being overlooked now more than ever. Before we design another stupid cell phone or build a flying car, let's put a stop to racism, to sexism, to homophobia, to war. Let's stop buying all our "American" products from sweat shops overseas and let's end poverty in third-world countries. Let's let film photography never go obsolete, let's let print books continue to be printed. Let's stop domestic violence and child abuse and prostitution and this world's heavy reliance on prescription drugs. Let's stop terrorism, let's stop animal cruelty, , let's stop overpopulation and urbanization, let's stop the manufacture of nuclear weapons... ...I mean come on, we have all these problems to solve, but digital tech enthusiasts are more concerned that we don't have flying cars or robotic maids yet? That's pathetic.

People who use snark attacks confuse cleverness with cruelty.

Perhaps she would not have thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one which it was so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in herself, as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the sufferings which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.

...perhaps great sins start as simple weakness, and the consistent placing of self before others.

Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.

Rudy Giuliani, you sexist mercurial asshat. Your friend Donald J. Trump's wife and this nation's reluctant First Lady, Melania, was an escort before entering into that sour marital accord with President blowhard. Naked photo's of her are everywhere- Facebook, Twitter, et al. And now that she's FLOTUS; we the people are to treat her with respect her own husband will not give her?

Puedes tener todos los abogados que quieras, carreras, dinero... Pero recuerda que tienes la misma garganta que yo y tú no sabes partirla.

Religious extremism is fatal to those who don't conform to its values, or remold or submit themselves to its 'principles'. It craves control and power - and power is the one tool that enables it to wreak its characteristic havoc, destruction and cruelty upon those it chooses to label as scapegoats. Giving in to extremists enables them and empowers them - and worse, it encourages them.

Remember this! It is never an entire people who is cruel; it is merely individuals who exert their will on others.

Remorse shows the difference between a cruel person and one that is not.

Revenge is possible only if you spare the enemy.

Racists cling to the false notion that we are separate. They refuse to acknowledge that they are connected to, and even descended from, other people of different skin color. Their egos demand that they be superior and that others be inferior. This is how they seek to justify their hatred of, and cruelty towards, others.

Riding out with the Old Surrey and Burstow Hunt, White recorded the first time he saw a kill with distanced fascination. The fox was dug out of a drain where it had taken refuge and thrown to the hounds. They tore it to pieces while a circle of human onlookers 'screeched them on'. The humans, White thought, were disgusting, their cries 'tense, self-conscious, and histerically animal'. But the hounds were not. 'The savagery of the hounds', he wrote, 'was deep-rooted and terrible, but rang true, so that it was not horrible like that of the human.