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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Ripley''': You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see [[Starfish Aliens|them]] fucking each other over for a Goddamn percentage.
|''[[Aliens]]''}}
It's bad to exploit others. To steal, to conquer, to torture, and most often when this comes up, to kill. But what makes it especially bad? Killing because you're human. Only humans, you see, are greedy, or jealous, or kill because they revel in someone else's suffering, while a monster who eats you, well, just has to eat. It's just dinner. Or it's just conquest, or
This can also apply to assassins, who may be human, but still don't kill out of rage, greed, or insanity like all the rest of us human killers do.
At times the same kind of motive can count either way depending on how it's presented. It's better to kill for
Often a form of [[Broken Aesop]] meant to imply that [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]]. See also [[Ape Shall Never Kill Ape]] where the monsters are better because they ''don't'' kill even if they ''do'' have human motives.
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If it is only claimed that the humans are just as bad (rather than worse), because ''both'' the humans and nonhumans kill wantonly, that is not this trope but may fall under [[Not So Different]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Film]] ==
* Ripley's famous quote above from ''[[Aliens]]''.
* Used in ''[[Grosse Pointe Blank]]'', where Martin claims that he's better than a psychopath ''because'' he kills for money (while psychopaths have no reason at all). He quickly backtracks into a [[That Came Out Wrong]], of course.
* In the live-action adaption of ''[[The Jungle Book (film)|The Jungle Book]]'', Mowgli explains that animals only kill to eat or to keep from being eaten. He doesn't understand the concept of killing out of hatred or sport and gets pissed when one of the hunters tries to explain it to him.
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** The dragon's justification in ''[[
{{quote|''We never tortured and killed each other and called it '''morality'''.''}}
** In ''[[
* In ''[[Worldwar]]'', the Race, who has just invaded the Earth and killed lots of people is shocked to see that humans not only kill each other, but mistreat their prisoners and like to cause suffering.
** The Race is shown to be applying plenty of double standards to humans. They consider human religious beliefs to be primitive and ridiculous, but don't try to say anything bad about their emperors, whom they revere as gods (of course, this can be said about most religious people). They claim that humans are reckless in detonating nukes to try to stop the Race invasion, after nuking Berlin and Washington for no good reason and then retaliating to humans using nukes with their own nukes.
== [[Live
* Touched on in the 2000s remake of ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* Averted in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "A Christmas Carol". Kazran states that he wanted to see a fish, not kill one. The Doctor points out that {{spoiler|the shark}} was trying to eat Kazran, getting the response, "He was ''hungry.''"
* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode, "A Taste of Armageddon," this trope is the rationale for the insane computer war two worlds are fighting. To oppose that, Kirk has to tell them that they of course are capable of self-control like any rational being.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The Professor's opening monologue on the [[
{{quote|'''Professor:''' Ants, Buzz. They build cities, wage wars, take slaves to work their underground farms. Some can even fly hundreds of feet into the sky and travel across vast oceans. But they never kill for sport. That is solely the domain of ''Homo Sapiens''.}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Cynicism Tropes]]
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[[Category:Humans Are Indexed]]
[[Category:Human Rights Issues]]
[[Category:No Real Life Examples, Please]]
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