Cruelty Quotes - Page 19

• Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Suffering, Cogs, Machines

  "The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti".

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• To Forget Venice is a tour de force of ventriloquism. Elegant, contemporary, and wry, the voice at its center is also capable of disarming flights of imagination as it enters and inhabits other lives across time and gender. The glittering, fetid city emerges as a complex metaphor for the human heart’s simultaneous tenderness and capacity for cruelty, its ‘silver glow / a local specialty: filth / disguised as ornament.’ This Venice is unforgettable.

  Chase Twichell

  Heart, Venice, Cities

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people-- men and women-- to face.

  Robert Jensen

  Sex, Struggle, Men

  Robert Jensen (2007). “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity”

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• It is my sincere opinion that our precious time on earth should not be spent attempting to justify unbelievable acts of cruelty, death, and disease as a part of 'God’s Plan' or the greater good — and clinging to ancient texts that preach ill-concealed bigotry and sexism. Instead, we should find ways to make this life happy and satisfying, without regard to the unknowable nature of an afterlife.

  David G. McAfee

  Happy Life, Afterlife, Time On Earth

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Mar 22, 2014

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• Compassion begets compassion, cruelty begets cruelty. What we give we will ultimately receive. Nonhumans help make us human. They teach us respect, compassion, and unconditional love. When we mistreat animals, we mistreat ourselves. When we destroy animal spirits and souls, we destroy our own spirits and souls.

  Marc Bekoff

  Unconditional Love, Animal, Compassion

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• Cast down, O Lord, all the forces of cruelty and wrong. Defeat all selfish and worldly-minded schemes, and prosper all that is conceived among us in the spirit of Christ and carried out to the honour of His blessed name. Amen.

  John Baillie

  Selfish, Blessed, Names

  John Baillie (1952). “A diary of private prayer”, Scribner

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• That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

  George Mason

  Tyrants, People, Gentleman

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• The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive.

  George Santayana

  Order, Space, Wonderful

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2014). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Religion, Volume VII, Book Three”, p.114, MIT Press

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