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One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.
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Sec. 116

 

John Locke

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Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.

 

John Locke

 

What does it mean to be compassionate? Not merely verbally, but actually to be compassionate? Is compassion a matter of habit, of thought, a matter of the mechanical repetition of being kind, polite, gentle, tender? Can the mind which is caught in the activity of thought with its conditioning, its mechanical repetition, be compassionate at all? It can talk about it, it can encourage social reform, be kind to the poor heathen and so on; but is that compassion? When thought dictates, when thought is active, can there be any place for compassion? Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Children should not be suffer'd to lose the consideration of human nature in the shufflings of outward conditions. The more they have, the better humor'd they should be taught to be, and the more compassionate and gentle to those of their brethren who are placed lower, and have scantier portions. If they are suffer'd from their cradles to treat men ill and rudely, because, by their father's title, they think they have a little power over them, at best it is ill-bred; and if care be not taken, will by degrees nurse up their natural pride into an habitual contempt of those beneath them. And where will that probably end but in oppression and cruelty?

 

John Locke

 

The amount of time it takes to provide is threefold for families whom have to make due with very little. … Children from poor households learn to have very low expectations of themselves and their future because they believe that the world around them doesn't expect much from them either. In India, children of the lower castes are taught still today that once poor always poor so they don't think to become doctors or lawyers because their last name may not be Gupta or whatever other typically higher caste name there may be in India.

 

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz

 

Say, lordly Man, of pow'rs possest,
That no inferior creatures know;
Say, can the mind with reason blest,
Relentless fury show.
To thy domain all beasts belong,
Yet why so merciless thy sway?
Why to the harmless, useful throng,
Such cruelty display?
Let all thy kind compassion share,
Through Nature's universal frame;
Whatever breathes thy kindred air,
Or feels the vital flame.

 

Elizabeth Bentley