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Cruel redirects here. The sort of embroidery thread is correctly spelt crewel.

Look up cruelty in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering and even positive pleasure in inflicting it.^{[citation needed]} Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept.

Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve violence, but violence is not necessary for an act to be cruel. For example, if another person is drowning and begging for help, and another person is able to help, but merely watches with disinterest or amusement, that person is being cruel — not violent.

Cruelty usually carries connotations of supremacy over a submissive or weaker force.

The term cruelty is often used with regard to the treatment of animals, children and prisoners. See: punishment, draconian, and cruel and unusual punishment. When cruelty to animals is discussed, it often refers to unnecessary suffering.^{[citation needed]}

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, almost all higher culture comes from the spiritualization of cruelty.^[1]

According to Ian McEwan, the Booker Prize winner in 1998, "novels are not about 'teaching people how to live but about showing the possibility of what it is like to be someone else. It is the basis of all sympathy, empathy and compassion. Other people are as alive as you are. Cruelty is a failure of imagination'." ^[2]

• Cruelty to animals
• Sacrifice
• Sadism
• Zoosadism
• Torture
• Violence
• Theatre of Cruelty

• Judith Shklar: Harvard University Professor Shklar's thought centered around two main beliefs: that cruelty is the greatest evil, and her idea of "liberalism of fear."

• Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, (2003)

1. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Section 229
2. ^ Kate Kellaway, Interview with Ian McEwan: At home with his worries. Guardian, 2001. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,552557,00.html