Cruelty Quotes - Page 13

• Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

  Rick Yancey

  Sensitive Person, Personality, Habit

  Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.132, Penguin

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• Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.

  Brené Brown

  Easy

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• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Dog, Nature, Greatness

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• She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.

  Neil Gaiman

  Secret, Storm, Lightning

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• There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

  John Boyne

  Trying, World, Breathe

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• Magnus began to be truly alarmed. Will's voice would have shaken, betraying that his cruelty had been part of his playacting, but his son's laugh was that of someone genuinely delighted by the chaos erupting all around him

  Cassandra Clare

  Son, Voice, Laughing

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson (2014). “The Bane Chronicles”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

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• [Luke, holding stormtrooper helmet.] Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not,/ yet have I taken both uniform and life/ From thee. What manner of a man wert thou?/ A man of inf'nite jest or cruelty?/ A man with helpmate and with children too?/ A man who hath his Empire serv'd with pride?/ A man, perhaps, who wish'd for perfect peace?/ What'er thou wert, goodman, thy pardon grant/ Unto the one who took thy place: e'en me.

  Ian Doescher

  Children, Taken, Pride

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• The other thing Aron found about sensitive people is that sometimes they're highly empathic. It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences. ... they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior.

  Susan Cain

  Strong, People, Tragedy

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.137, Broadway Books

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• An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.

  Eve Ensler

  Fighting, Compassion, Mad

  Jody Williams, Eve Ensler (2013). “My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize”, p.9, Univ of California Press

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• All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.

  Bell Hooks

  Believe, Commitment, Expression

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• In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.

  Alice Miller

  Suicide, Bullying, Children

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• So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Thinking, Years

  Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (2009). “Mainly the truth: interviews with Mark Twain”, University Alabama Press

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• Freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation... In the face of tyranny, cruelty, oppression, extremism, sometimes there is only one choice. When the world looks to America, America looks to you, and you never let her down.

  Hillary Clinton

  Patriotic, America, Choices

  "Clinton: Iraq Tactics 'Working. We’re Just Years Too Late...'". Hillary Clinton’s remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 20, 2007.

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• Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, War, Fall

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• All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.

  Walter Raleigh

  Mean, Power, Men

  "The Cabinet Council". Book by Walter Raleigh, Chapter 25, 1658.

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• We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Christian, Religious, Lying

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• If experience be consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that has not received the applause of some people. Parricide - the sacrifice of children - robbery - usurpation - cruelty - intolerance - prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions, and have been deemed laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all, Religion has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting customs.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Children, Sacrifice, People

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• What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

  Thomas Paine

  Bible, Believe, Religion

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• You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so called age of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Believe, Men

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• The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Pain, History, Religion

  "History of England". Volume I, Chapter II, 1849-1861.

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• I just have this absolute belief that humans are moving away from cruelty and destruction towards a time when we can truly live in harmony with nature. When we understand that there is a spiritual power around us from which we can draw strength. That is where I believe human destiny ultimately is taking us. I just hope we have time.

  Jane Goodall

  Strength, God, Spiritual

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• The moralist must praise heroism and condemn cruelty; but the moralist does not explain events.

  Georges Lefebvre

  History, Heroism, Events

  Georges Lefebvre (2011). “Napoleon”, p.12, Taylor & Francis

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• Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.

  Mark Jenkins

  Motivational, Travel, Kindness

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• Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.

  Alexander von Humboldt

  Ignorance, Animal, Luxury

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• We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

  Rachel Carson

  Life, Peace, Heart

  Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson (1972). “The house of life: Rachel Carson at work”

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