Like making jokes or copulating without regard to season, torturing is one of those activities that distinguish human beings from other animals. Inflicted both on our congeners and on other species, it marks us out, in the words of the King of Brobdingnag, as a pernicious race of little odious vermin.

LRB, 29.1.2009 > Glen Newey: Gloves Off", langes mit zusammengebissenen Zähnen geschriebenes Stück über Folter, Moral, Ordnung der Dinge, den Wunsch, die Ordnung der Dinge zu ordnen, Vordenker &tc.