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Cruelty is the wilful inflicting of pain

• Cruel: Wilfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.  Oxford Dictionary
• Cruel: Used to describe people who hurt others and do not feel sorry about it.  Merriam Webster
• Abuse,  Bullying,  Pain,  Suffering,  Evil,  Kindness,  Mercy,  Revenge

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Cruelty is man’s inhumanity

• We can never be gods, after all–but we can become something less than human with frightening ease. N. K. Jemisin
• To exult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman. Hugh Blair
• Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands do likewise. Evan Esar

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Cruelty is one of the worst vices

• Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices. Michel de Montaigne
• Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity. George Eliot
• Cruelty is the vice most natural to dullness of mind. H.W. Nevinson
• Vice

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Cruelty is the worst of the sins and the hardest to forgive

• Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty. Gilbert K. Chesterton
• Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the most unforgivable thing in my opinion, and the one thing of which I have never, ever been guilty. Tennessee Williams
• Cruelty is the first attribute of the devil. Nani
• Sin,  Forgiveness

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Cruelty is the greatest distance we can get from God

• Cruelty constitutes the greatest moral distance at which an intelligent creature can be removed from a God of forbearance and mercy. Eliza Cook
• God

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Of all the animals, man is the only one that is intentionally cruel

• People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of humans, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a person, so artfully, so artistically cruel. Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change. Martin Amis
• There is no beast more cruel than man. Leonid Andreyev
• Man is the cruellest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal. Rabindranath Tagore
• Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. Mark Twain

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Cruelty is an instinct and impulse for many

• The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love – almost as violent and much more mischievous. Aldous Huxley
• Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity. Michel de Montaigne
• Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would. Thomas Hardy

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Cruelty may be very human but it’s not acceptable

• Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it’s not acceptable. Jodie Foster

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Cruelty is most apparent in uncivilised societies – or is it?

• . . . the cruelty that goes under the barbarous regime we call civilisation. Thomas Hardy
• Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities. Harriet Ann Jacobs
• Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man’s cruelty and baseness. Bryant H. McGill

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Some argue mankind is gradually getting less cruel

• Mankind continues to become gradually less cruel because a few people in every generation keep saying, “This isn’t right. It hurts me to see it. Joan Gilbert
• Cruelty to men and to the lower animals as well, which would have passed unnoticed a century ago, now shocks the sensibilities and is regarded as wicked and degrading. Elihu Root

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Cruelty does harm to both the recipient and instigator

• Gossip and reputation make sure that what comes around-a person who is cruel will find that the others are cruel hack to him, and a person who is kind will find others are kind in return. Gossip paired with reciprocity allow karma to work here on earth, not in the next life. Jonathan Haidt
• A merciful person helps himself, but a cruel person hurts himself. Proverbs 11: 17
• Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel. King Solomon
• Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. Paul Tillich

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Cruelty holds back the progress of humanity

• Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is — whether its victim is human or animal — we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity. Rachel Carson
• Progress

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Cruelty springs from fear

• Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell
• Fear is the parent of cruelty. James A. Froude
• Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the most cruel. Georges Bernanos
• Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a person’s entire existence. Honoré de Balzac
• Cruelty is a tyrant that’s always attended with fear. Thomas Fuller
• Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity. Mason Cooley
• Fear

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Cruelty springs from weakness

• I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. Leo Rosten
• Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong. Leo F. Buscaglia
• All cruelty springs from weakness. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• Weakness

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Cruelty springs from stupidity and folly

• Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person’s way of making oneself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow then to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem. Anne Holm
• Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel. Jack London
• Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent. Aldous Huxley
• Stupidity

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Cruelty springs from failure

• The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self- complacent is erroneous. On the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel. Somerset Maugham
• Failure

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Cruelty springs from unlimited power in the hands of few

• Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
• An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality. Joseph Addison
• Power

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Cruelty springs from ignorance

• Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is impotence; it is fear; it is cruelty; it is all the things that make for unhappiness. Ingrid Holtby
• Money is not the root of all evil…ignorance is the root of all evil. People do cruel and foolish things for money because they feel oppressed by a sense of lack. If people knew their power to generate wealth, they would never fight or hurt each other over money. Alan Cohen
• Ignorance

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Cruelty springs from boredom

• Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time. Renata Adler
• Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables. Marguerite Vourcenar
• Cruelty is the vice most natural to dullness of mind. H.W. Nevinson
• There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. James Russell Lowell
• Boredom

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Cruelty springs from thoughtlessness

• Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. Albert Schweitzer
• Thoughtfulness

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Life can be cruel but also beautiful

• I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom. Les Brown
• It’s a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful. Hiromu Arakawa
• There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer
• People are constantly clamouring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life – to learn something is a joy to me. August Strindberg
• Beauty

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Honesty can be cruel

• Honesty is the cruellest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone – and hurt them to the bone – you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time. Dave Van Ronk
• All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness. Tennessee Williams
• Honesty

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Words can be cruel

• Remember that cruel words deeply hurt. Remember that loving words quickly heal.  Jackson Brown, Jr.
• Words

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Regret can be cruel

• In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are “if only.” Lisa See
• Regret

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Loneliness can be cruel

• Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruellest irony. Douglas Coupland
• Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. Germaine Greer
• I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness. Tom Hiddleston
• Loneliness

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Justice can be cruel

• He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly? Byron
• Justice

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The truth can be cruel

• The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. George Santayana
• Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths. Jean Baptiste Moliere
• Truth

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Promising too much can be cruel

• Promising too much can be as cruel as caring too little. William J. Clinton

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Reason without emotion can be cruel

• Emotion without reason lets people walk all over you; reason without emotion is a mask for cruelty. Nalini Singh
• Reason,  Emotion

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War is cruel

• War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. William Tecumseh Sherman
• War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle. Gilbert Parker
• If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking. William Tecumseh Sherman
• It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement. Henry Ward Beecher

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Nature is cruel – or is it?

• Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would. Thomas Hardy
• Nature is not cruel, pitilessly, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. Richard Dawkins
• 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
• Nature

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Religion can be cruel, especially if it is intolerant of other beliefs

• It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty. Ilka Chase
• People nearly always believe, and are willing to back it up with weapons and cruelty, that their religion and way of life is better than the other person’s. Caroline B. Cooney
• The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell. Bertrand Russell
• Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief. James Russell Lowell
• In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another. J. William Fulbright
• Religion,  Belief

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Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man

• Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. Thomas Paine
• It is of course evident that everything in one’s religious life depends upon the sort of God one worships. The character of the worshiper must necessarily be molded by the character of the object worshipped.  If it is a cruel and revengeful God, or a selfish and unjust God, the worshiper will be cruel, and revengeful, and selfish, and unjust, also.  If it is a loving, tender, forgiving, unselfish God, the worshiper will be loving, and tender, and forgiving, and unselfish, as well. Hannah Whitall Smith
• God

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Sometimes we are cruellest to those we love

• Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best? Jacqueline Carey
• Love

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Choose mercy over cruelty

• 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction. Susan Sonrag
• A merciful person helps himself, but a cruel person hurts himself. Proverbs 11: 17
• Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save. John Gay
• The truth doesn’t have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy. Ken Kesey
• Mercy

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Oppose all cruel customs, no matter how rooted in tradition

• The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another. Albert Schweitzer
• Tradition

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If we can stop cruelty, we must – or we are complicit in it

• My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt. Anna Sewell
• The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it. Anna Sewell
• All tyranny, bigotry, aggression, and cruelty are wrong, and whenever we see it, we must never be silent. Ingrid Newkirk

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Meet cruelty with kindness and break the pattern

• Hurt people, hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future. Yehuda Berg
• Kindness

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At the end of your life, you’ll be left with the question, “Were you cruel or kind?”

• “I believe that there is only one story in the world…Humans are caught–in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too–in a net of good and evil…A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well–or ill? John Steinbeck

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Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty

• Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty. Phaedrus
• Gentleness

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Kindness is the antidote to cruelty …

• Men are cruel, but Man is kind. Rabindranath Tagore
• I suppose people in general can be cruel to one another because it’s easier to do the wrong thing; kindness takes an effort most are not willing to exert. Kersti Kahar
• Kindness

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… or is it?

• I must be cruel only to be kind. William Shakespeare
• Kindness is the beginning of cruelty. Frank Herbert
• Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness. George Eliot

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Compassion is the antidote to cruelty

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

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We especially shouldn’t be cruel to children

• Cruelty to children is the thing I can least bear in the world. Juliet Stevenson
• Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell. Francois Mauriac

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We also shouldn’t be cruel to animals

• 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
• I don’t believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals. Gary Larson
• Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility. William Jones
• The brute animals have all the same sensations of pain as human beings, and consequently endure as much pain when their body is hurt; but in their case the cruelty of torment is greater, because they have no mind to bear them up against their sufferings, and no hope to look forward to when enduring the last extreme pain…. Thomas Chalmers
• Show me the enforced laws of a state for the prevention of cruelty to animals and I in turn will give you a correct estimate of the refinement, enlightenment, integrity and equity of that commonwealth’s people. L.T. Danshiell
• I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs … They are an obligation put on us, a responsibility we have no right to neglect, nor to violate by cruelty. James Herriot
• Keep fighting for animals by making compassionate, cruelty-free choices every day and encouraging those around you to do the same. Bea Arthur
• As long as man eats animals how can cruelty to animals be removed. Morarji Desai
• I believe in preventing cruelty to all living beings in any form. Morarji Desai
• I’m very touched on a deep level by cruelty to animals. Ali MacGraw
• Detested sport, that owes its pleasures to another’s pain. William Cowper
• Animals

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Cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to mankind

• If man is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practise kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. Immanuel Kant
• I am sometimes asked “Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?” I answer: “I am working at the roots.” George Thorndike Angell
• Cruelty has cursed the human family for countless ages. It is almost impossible for one to be cruel to animals and kind to humans. If children are permitted to be cruel to their pets and other animals, they easily learn to get the same pleasure from the misery of fellow-humans. Such tendencies can easily lead to crime. Fred A. McGrand
• Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind – it is only the difference in the victim. Alphonse de Lamartine

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• Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt. George Bernard Shaw
• My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. Vladimir Nabokov
• Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it? Steven Wright
• Golf is the cruelest game because eventually it will drag you out in front of the whole school, take your lunch money and slap you around. Rick Reilly
• I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold or cruel but I am so that’s how it comes out. Bill Hicks
• There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. James Russell Lowell

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