A Quote by J. M. Coetzee

We are not by nature cruel.

J. M. Coetzee

Quote Topics

Cruel Nature

Quote Author

J. M. Coetzee
South African - Novelist
Born: February 9, 1940

Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is.

Simon Barnes

[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

Richard Dawkins

Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.

Catherynne M. Valente

God is cruel and not cruel. He is all being and not being at the same time. Hence He is all contradictions. Nature also is nothing but a mass of contradictions.

Swami Vivekananda

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Benjamin Britten

Mother Nature's ruthless to the weak, but isn't arbitrary cruel or negative. Mother Nature saves aggression for extreme situations, and instead uses consistent leadership--to help keep things running smoothly. Mother nature doesn't rule by fear and anger, but by calm strength and assertiveness.

Cesar Millan

Nature is not cruel, only 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

My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Camille Paglia

Nature is cruel but we don't have to be

Temple Grandin

Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.

Fernando Botero

I do not see why man should not be as cruel as nature

Adolf Hitler

Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books.

Alison Lurie

I worship nothing. Not a good lie nor a dark one. If nature is proof of God's amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage.