John Gay Quotes

Men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the Earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

...In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.

I have seen Tasmanian devils battle over a carcass. I have seen lionesses crowding a kill, dingoes on the trail of a feral piglet, and adult croc thrashing its prey to pieces. But never, in all the animal world, have I witnessed anything to match the casual cruelty of the human being.

Men kill for many reasons, they steal but for one-greed.

These pigeons have been living with each other for 10 or 15 years, but when I throw feed down, they kill each other to get it, and it's the same with the fighters. We love and respect each other...but we need that money.

Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.

It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.

We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

In the harsh and violent Middle East surrounding us, there is no mercy for the weak. Only the strong survive!

Violence is literally the glue of the cycle of life, and yet I think that we're the only species that does it maliciously.

The trouble is, the same thing that enabled us to survive evolution is also going to kill us, because in the final analysis, if survival is the primary motivation of every human being, then we will finally be in a situation where might will make right and only one person will survive.

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atorcity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.

We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

Wolves ate even mighty hunters, for there was no honor or code among predators, and everyone's guts steam the same way when torn open on a cold night.

When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.

Man is still a savage to the extent that he has little respect for anything that cannot hurt him.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

There is nothing wrong with having competitive instincts. They are survival instincts.

We're animals. We're violent.