When we fear of cruelty we instantly feel a sense of the difference between ourselves and the “brute” who is responsible. And it is precisely that lack of fellow-feeling that made the cruelty possible in the first place.

—Colin Wilson

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

 —George Eliot

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death to inflict torture and death, will be appalled and so abandon war forever.

—Thomas Edison

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

—E. M. Cioran

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty.

—Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

The decisive feature in a sadist is… that a sadist enhances his own life experience by robbing it from another being. A sadist elevates himself by putting down another person.

—Esa Saarinen

Weak men are apt to be cruel.

—Lord Halifax

All cruelty springs from weakness.

—Seneca

The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves.

 —Mark Twain

The goddess of mercy has a thousand hands — and needs them all.

—Japanese proverb

Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it.

 —Anna Sewell

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men.

—Abraham Lincoln

To close your eyes will not ease another’s pain.

 —Chinese proverb

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 will 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