#cruelty

Twas such a useless thing. And so unnecessary. Many had suffered for the actions of a few. Wasn't that always the way of things? The collective suffered for the actions of an inept, ineffectual leader. ↗

— Maya Banks

#cruelty #life #life-and-living #suffering #life

...the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don't have the power over you they would like. That's why they do what they do. And I'm not going to give them the power now. But it was a cruel thing that they did, and when they had finished hurting me, a splinter of loneliness seemed to break off and stay inside me forever. ↗

— Marcel Theroux

#hurt #ideology #men #men

Goodness, real goodness, has it's own sort of cruelty to it. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#goodness #jem #cruelty

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#nature #philosophy #nature

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#animal-rights #animal-welfare #animals #attitude

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature. ↗

— John Berger

#around #cite #cruelty #evil #human

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain. ↗

— Elizabeth Bowen

#brain #cruelty #fantasy #heated #private

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them. ↗

— George W. Bush

#been #between #certain #conflict #course

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.' ↗

— Alice Walker

#chain #choose #convinced #cruelty #delight

In the context of interfaith encounter, we need to bring to the surface how our actual beliefs shape what we do - not simply to agree that kindness is better than cruelty. ↗

— Rowan D. Williams

#agree #beliefs #better #bring #context