Cruelty Quotes - Page 40

• You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.

  Charlotte Ross

  Pain, Animal, Suffering

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• Habits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of cruelty to animals as emotional, for "animal-lovers only"; or if not that, then anyway the problem is so trivial in comparison to the problems of human beings that no sensible person could give it time and attention. This too is a prejudice - for how can one know that a problem is trivial until one has taken the time to examine its extent?

  Peter Singer

  Taken, Emotional, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• As for cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy.

  Peter Singer

  Country, Dog, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?

  Clarence Darrow

  Heart, Evil, Hatred

  Clarence Darrow (2012). “Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom”, p.52, University of Chicago Press

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• The so-called Christian virtues of humility, love, charity, personal freedom, the strong prohibitions against violence, murder, stealing, lying, cruelty-all these are washed away by war. The greatest hero is the one who kills the most people. Glamorous exploits in successful lying and mass stealing and heroic vengeance are rewarded with decorations and public acclaim.

  John T. Flynn

  Christian, Strong, War

  John T. Flynn (1944). “As We Go Marching”

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• Being kind to animals is not enough. Avoiding cruelty is not enough. Housing animals in more comfortable, larger cages is not enough. Whether we exploit animals to eat, to wear, to entertain us, or to learn, the truth of animal rights requires empty cages, not larger cages.

  Tom Regan

  Learning, Animal, Rights

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• You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Country, War, Sacrifice

  Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta, Ga., and others, 12 Sept. 1864 See Napoleon 11; William Tecumseh Sherman 3

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• Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonzo's blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.

  Orson Scott Card

  Life, Running, Morning

  Orson Scott Card (2010). “Ender's Game”, p.139, Macmillan

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• The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.

  Norman Cousins

  Death, Heart, Compassion

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• It is a man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Inspirational, Sympathy, Men

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• It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Sympathy, Heart, Islands

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• The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Halloween, Mirrors, Done

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.66, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

  Glen Duncan

  Kindness, Kids, People

  Glen Duncan (2011). “The Last Werewolf (The Last Werewolf 1)”, p.281, Canongate Books

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• Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

  James A. Baldwin

  Spiritual, Arrogance, Atheism

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind" by James A. Baldwin in "The New Yorker" (November 17, 1962), republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in James A. Baldwin "The Fire Next Time", 1963.

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• It's not that bullying is any worse today. The impulse for cruelty is the same impulse. The only difference is that the tools to achieve that have become more sophisticated.

  Jodee Blanco

  Bullying, Differences, Tools

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• Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they.

  Joseph Brant

  Christian, Children, Practice

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• The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.

  Kenneth Clark

  Educational, Ghetto, Dark

  Kenneth B. Clark (1989). “Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power”, p.11, Wesleyan University Press

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• When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.

  Gautama Buddha

  Men, Compassion, Animal

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• Fear is isolating for those that fear. And I have come to believe that fear is a cruelty to those who are feared.

  Eula Biss

  Believe

  "No-Man’s-Land" by Eula Biss, www.believermag.com. February 2008.

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• It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people. . . . If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with.

  Isaac Asimov

  Running, Horse, Fall

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• Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Kindness, Reform, Civility

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.4249, Library of Alexandria

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• Military necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Revenge, Military, Enemy

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• This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.

  David Henry Hwang

  Air, Listening, World

  David Henry Hwang (1988). “M. Butterfly”, p.58, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• The pornographers did a kind of stealth attack on our culture, hijacking our sexuality and then selling it back to us, often in forms that look very little like sex but a lot like cruelty. 

  Gail Dines

  Determination, Sex, Fighting

  "Should We Worry Whether Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality?". Interview with Sonali Kolhatkar, www.alternet.org. September 10, 2010.

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• There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself

  James Nayler

  Revenge, Wrath, Evil

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