#cruelty

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. ↗

— Maximilien Robespierre

#cruelty #forgive #humanity #oppressors #punish

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#dark-humor #dragons #morality #humor

...It also taught me that while cruelty can be fun for a few moments, compassion has a much longer shelf life. ↗

— Doreen Orion

#cruelty #empathy #teasing #life

...people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham - all a sham, James, and it won't stand when things come to be turned inside out and upside down for what they are. ↗

— Anna Sewell

#horses #religion #beauty

Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's mercy, then it's his gift of making us unable to lie. ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#cruelty #lie #lying #truth #men

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#cruelty #goodness #character

I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#religion #religion

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#cruelty #poetry #seasons #weather #dead

All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport -- in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy." [Quoted in Socialism and Foreign Policy and War and the Liberal Conscience] ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#fighting #foreign-policy #literature #narrow-mindedness #prejudice

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#call #cruelty #deliberate #greater #him