“Those who kill “humanely” often contend that their victims suffer minimally or not at all. This contention helps ease their guilt and makes the continuation of the killing more acceptable.”

— Charles Patterson (author)

Source: Eternal Treblinka (2002), p. 133

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Those who kill “humanely” often contend that their victims suffer minimally or not at all. This contention helps ease t…" by Charles Patterson (author)?

Charles Patterson (author) 5

American author and historian 1935

Related quotes

“According to Mona, you shouldn't kill people, because that drives you away from humanity. In order to justify killing, you have to make the victim your enemy. To justify any crime, you have to make the victim your enemy.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 22

“When healthy animals, whose prospects include the possibility of lives that are worth living, are killed, then they suffer the loss of those prospects, even if they do not suffer pain or anxiety in the killing process. So, the mass killing or "slaughter" of animals for food always involves mass suffering. If the phrase "humane slaughter" is supposed to indicate a killing process without suffering, it is a false label.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

" Morals, Reason and Animals: Steve Sapontzis Interviewed by Claudette Vaughan https://web.archive.org/web/20100114161007/http:/www.abolitionist-online.com/08_steve_sapontzis.shtml", Abolitionist Online (2009)

“I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 155
Testimony (1979)

“In Stage II guilt is first of all social, liberal, moral guilt—a guilt so general as to seem almost formal. It is we who are responsible, either by commission or—more generally—by omission, for everything from killing off the Tasmanians to burning the books at Alexandria.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

You didn’t do it? Then you should have stopped them from doing it. You never heard of it? Ignorant as well as evil, eh? You weren’t born? You’re guilty, I tell you—guilty.
“Freud to Paul: The Stages of Auden’s Ideology”, p. 169
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

“Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.”

Mary Renault book The Persian Boy

On Alexander the Great, p. 312
The Persian Boy (1972)
Context: It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.