Brutality Quotes

“I had a long talk with my dear Fat Mary that night, because I had many questions. Could someone actually be beaten to death by such a nun? Did Mother Rufina, the new Superior, know that Sister Clotilda was so cruel? Who let her work with children? Could nuns go to hell?
Fat Mary told me she didn’t know the answers to my questions, but she reminded me that it was her role to take my worries and burdens and keep them for me until a time when I could understand them.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.”
― Stefan Zweig

“Mary’s childhood was rough. She was frequently beaten and chastised by the nuns who served as her protectors and brutalized by the older girls in the orphanage.

Oh how I wept those first few years of my life. My tears came like tropical storms. Every pore in my body wept. I heaved and shuddered and sighed. Everything around me seemed dark and terrifying.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child

“I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.”
― Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

“The biggest threat against the survival of humanity is not brutality and unkindness, it is stupidity and selfishness.”
― M.F. Moonzajer

“When the Bolsheviks came to power they were soft and easy with their enemies... we had begun by making a mistake. Leniency towards such a power was a crime against the working classes. That soon became apparent...”
― Joseph Stalin

“The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.”
― Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War

“The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.”
― Robert Buettner, Overkill

“Compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment...”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“I'd seen glimpses of a different me. It was a different me because in those increments of time I thought I actually became a winner.
The truth, however, is painful.
It was a truth that told me with a scratching internal brutality that I was me, and that winning wan't natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind. In a way, I had to scavenge for moments of alrightness.”
― Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl

“Take lights and deform them as brutally as you can.”
― Kurt Schwitters

“Don't be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The arrogance and brutality of empire are not repealed when they temporarily get deployed in a just cause.”
― Michael Kazin, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“When you think about new-born babies being killed in our own lifetime,' he said, 'all the efforts of culture seem worthless. What have people learned from all our Goethes and Bachs? To kill babies?”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived...And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability—such that we enjoy now— without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history.”
― Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable

“Wo ein Gebildeter weilt, kann keine Rohheit aufkommen.”
― Konfuzius, Gespräche

“Social systems proceed by (usually) covering up the brutalities upon which they are based. The doctor doesn't let you get to his door and then turn you away, rather his home address is hard to find. The government handcuffs you so they don't have to shoot you trying to escape. And so on.”
― Tyler Cowen

“Nie betrieben die Menschen das Böse so umfassend und freudig wie aus religiöser Überzeugung.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The door suddenly opened. A leggy young brunette took two steps into the office and stopped short. Her brown eyes widened, she hastily excused herself and turned to leave. Pérez’s jaw dropped as he looked up at her high heels and ankles. He crawled out from under the desk and turned questioningly to his partner. Thorne didn't hesitate. He took one swift stride from behind, clamped a hand tightly over her mouth, and pulled her back into the room, disregarding her wildly flailing legs and frantic attempts to claw his hands away. He shut the door with a backward thrust of his foot.
"What do we do now?" Pérez whined.
"Observe." Thorne spoke calmly, as would a professor demonstrating a familiar operation to a beginner. Using both hands, he briskly snapped her neck. She stopped struggling.”
― Clark Zlotchew, The Caucasian Menace

“We let it slide,
turned our eyes inside-blind
when you made our little sister cry
burnt tears,
blood, we let it slide
when you held our brother
by the throat
until he choked
out
and died.
We let it slide
when we finally tried
to make a sound but
you had each other’s back
and lied.
We let it slide.
Even now
we let it slide.”
― Roy Duffield, Bacchus Against the Wall

“The blue brotherhood is out of control!”
― Steven Magee

“I police the police.”
― Steven Magee

“The public should not have to police the police.”
― Steven Magee

“a smashed window always rings louder
in the media's ears than the clacking
of six rounds emptied into
a black teen's body
#Ferguson”
― Remi Kanazi, Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine

“He’ll put a hole in your belly and fuck the wound while you’re still alive. We don’t call him the Animal for nothing.”
― J.F. Gonzalez, Survivor

“Bravery without kindness leads to brutality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“Those who were brutalized sometimes became brutal in return.”
― Claudia Gray, Lost Stars

“What happened that day in Pachigam need not be set down here in full detail, because brutality is brutality, excess is excess and that’s all there is to it. There are things that must be looked at indirectly because they would blind you if you looked them in the face, like the fore of the sun. So, to repeat: there was no Pachigam anymore, Pachigam was destroyed. Imagine it for yourself.

Second attempt: The village of Pachigam still existed on the maps of Kashmir, but that day it ceased to exist anywhere else, except in memory.

Third and final attempt: The beautiful village of Pachigam still exists.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown