If one person is unkind to an animal, it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.

—Ruth Harrison

kindness money animals cruelty commerce

About Ruth Harrison

Ruth Harrison (née Winsten; 24 June 1920 – 13 June 2000) was an English animal welfare activist and writer.

More quotations tagged with “cruelty”

Cruelty is easy, and it breeds only misery. Kindness is harder, and you have to be brave to give it. To be cruel, you can stay closed off from everyone, wear a mask, but to be kind, in essence, to show love, you have to make yourself vulnerable, show your true self to someone and open yourself up to rejection.

—L.H. Cosway in The Nature of Cruelty

love kindness rejection vulnerability misery cruelty bravery

The most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.

—Katherine Anne Porter

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It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.

—Kingsley Amis

life people cruelty

It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

evil animals cruelty animal cruelty

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.

—Albert Schweitzer

habit cruelty instincts thoughtlessness inhumanity

History

11 Jul 2015 Added