Top 100 Quotes About Persecution
#1. The sole purpose and effect of it is to exclude persecution and to secure the important right of religious liberty.
Oliver Ellsworth
#2. For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair" ... And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?
Salman Rushdie
#3. I think the thing that I most appreciate now is that stereotypes involving Jewish identity activate fears of persecution that exist in the present day.
Gregg Easterbrook
#4. That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.
James Madison
#5. Iran's continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and political prisoners is a disgrace and stands as a shameful indictment of Iran's leaders.
William Hague
#6. The real key to accepting and enduring a particular trial or persecution, or to persevering victoriously through a certain period of suffering, is discipleship.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#7. Persecution is the compliment paid by a threatened lie to a conquering truth.
Chapman Cohen
#8. Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.
Alice Walker
#9. Peace is self-examination and being all right with what you see. Freedom is being able to open up to others without the worry of persecution. Happiness is seeing others for who they are and embracing the differences.
Leeann Smith
#10. I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.
Simon Schama
#11. Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather
it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
John F. Kennedy
#12. That is good. It is a law of nature. That is the way with all founders of religion. Without persecution superior ideas cannot penetrate into the heart of society.
Swami Vivekananda
#13. Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.
Roxane Gay
#14. Holocaust Museum said ISIS has carried out genocide against the Yazidis, but its investigation did not cover Christian persecution. Now there's concern the U.S. State Department might do the same, limiting any genocide pronouncement to Yazidis without mentioning Christians.
Tom Gjelten
#15. Then he raised his voice in a prophet-like challenge that I knew would live with me forever: "Don't ever give up in freedom what we would never give up in persecution!
Nik Ripken
#16. Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#17. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution. And
Alexander Hamilton
#18. Wherever you see persecution, there is more than a probability that truth lies on the persecuted side.
Hugh Latimer
#19. A person can't brood over one mistake, or waste time feeling sorry for himself, or take on any sort of persecution complex. Today I realize that once you have made a mistake, you must accept it, profit by it, and then totally dismiss it from your mind.
Bart Starr
#20. It'll be all right, Clay. Really." "So you say, but you have a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur." "That's true," Tom said, "but they're balanced out by poor self-image and ego menstruation at roughly six week intervals ...
Stephen King
#21. There have been times I almost got a persecution complex. I felt like people wouldn't let me grow up. They always saw me as a smiling kid or goofy teenager, no matter how much I'd changed.
Ricky Schroder
#22. Do not expect, my friend, that the whole world will rejoice if you become Christian. You will probably receive enmity and hatred and persecution from certain people. It happened in the case of our Lord, and His followers must always be ready to meet it.
Martyn
#23. To show a 'well-founded fear of persecution', an alien need not prove that it is more likely than not that he or she will be persecuted in his or her home country.
John Paul Stevens
#24. The expulsion and welcome of the Jews provides a striking contrast between Christian persecution and Muslim tolerance, and in economic terms between western Europe's short-sightedness and sound Ottoman investment.
David Brewer
#25. Stereotypes involving Christian identity, Christian persecution is so far back in history now that no one fears it being revived, unless you live in China, I guess.
Gregg Easterbrook
#26. When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.
Angelina Jolie
#27. The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.
John Stuart Mill
#28. Persecution has never hurt the church ... only prosperity.
Paul Washer
#29. Laughter, ridicule, opposition and persecution are often the only reward which Christ's followers get from the world.
J.C. Ryle
#30. I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
George Washington
#31. It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution.
Mahatma Gandhi
#32. At the Vatican, Mr. Putin and Francis were expected to focus on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, an issue of mutual concern.
Anonymous
#33. True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anxiety, distress, affliction, persecution, suffering, and death.
William Roscoe Estep
#34. Persecution happens when we stand in the face of our enemy. Friendship with the world is to conspire with that same enemy.
Brian Reynolds
#35. Britain has always been a home to the vulnerable, and we've always done what we need to do to help people who are fleeing persecution.
George Osborne
#36. Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.
Frances Wright
#37. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.
Bertrand Russell
#38. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
James Madison
#39. Our brothers and sisters in Muslim countries can't celebrate Christmas-or any aspect of their faith-openly for fear of persecution and death. And yet we, with all our freedoms, often choose to make Christmas a celebration of commercialism!
Erwin W. Lutzer
#40. Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.
Ruth Benedict
#41. September 11 was a godsend for Israel. It could now conjoin its merciless persecution of the Palestinians with Bush's War against Terror. But my impression is that it wasn't altogether successful.
Norman Finkelstein
#42. In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution.
Kage Baker
#43. Do not handicap yourself with the idea of revenge, for the trend of things will revenge your wrong not only upon the individuals responsible for your persecution, but on the society that has permitted this lawlessness.
Vidkun Quisling
#44. There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.
William Blake
#45. The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir
Alfred North Whitehead
#46. Preaching, power, and persecution are all apart of who we are.
George O. Wood
#47. The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#48. But if I be asked what sign we may look for to show that the advance of the faith is at hand I would answer by a word the modern world has forgotten: Persecution. When that shall once more be at work it will be morning.
Hilaire Belloc
#49. It is in the ardent revolutionist to whom the joys of art, of science, even of family life, seem bitter, so long as they cannot be shared by all, and who works despite misery and persecution for the regeneration of the world.
Pyotr Kropotkin
#51. I'll work to ensure that every single refugee who seeks asylum in the United States has a fair chance to tell his or her story. This is the least we can offer people fleeing persecution and devastation.
Hillary Clinton
#52. Christians well know that the much-decorated statue of the Church, as it now stands, is not of pure chiseled marble, but of clay, cemented together by blood and tears and hardened in the fires of hatred and persecution.
Virchand Gandhi
#53. A greater persecution shall befall the Christian Church than has ever been in Africa, and will last until the year 1792, when there will be a revision of centuries.
Nostradamus
#54. The causes of the China Incident were the exclusion and insult of Japan throughout China, the exclusion of Japanese goods, the persecution of Japanese residents in China, and the illegal violation of Japanese rights.
Hideki Tojo
#55. The FSB's invisible presence continued; the agency became an intangible part of my Moscow life - sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, with someone in a back room clearly turning the volume of minor persecution up and down.
Luke Harding
#56. It is evil things that we will be fighting against-brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution-and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.
Neville Chamberlain
#57. Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
John Calvin
#58. Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation.
Hosea Ballou
#59. Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.
Charles Simmons
#60. [H]as it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?
[1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor' (Columbia University / The New York Times, December 12, 1991)]
Salman Rushdie
#61. We are all of us remarkably goodtempered while we have our own way; but the true meekness, which is a work of grace, will stand the fire of persecution, and will endure the test of enmity, cruelty, and wrong, even as the meekness of Christ did upon the cross of Calvary.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#62. And in that hour,
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
Regardless of their plaints.
William Cowper
#63. Let us not forget: we are a pilgrim church, subject to misunderstanding, to persecution, but a church that walks serene, because it bears the force of love.
Oscar A. Romero
#64. He held to the idea that the Jewish people, so often victims of injustice and persecution, should have a state where they could be independent and free. Think good or ill of Arik Sharon, agree or disagree with him, but that calling - a noble one - was plain and unalloyed.
Ariel Sharon
#65. the challenge of living with popular culture may well be as serious for modern Christians as persecution and plagues were for the saints of earlier centuries.
Ken Myers
#66. Affliction shows the power of Christ's blood, when it gives peace in an hour of trouble, when it can make happy in sickness, poverty, persecution and death. Do not be surprised if you suffer, but glorify God.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
#67. Ask yourself, 'who is the one suffering from this anger? The person who has harmed me has gone on to live their life (or perhaps has died), while I am the one sitting here feeling the persecution, burning and constriction of anger. Out of compassion for myself, to ease my own heart, may I let go.
Sharon Salzberg
#68. One would think that [persecution] would be an obstacle to church growth when joining the church meant a death sentence. And yet, the age of persecution was the greatest period of church growth in history.
Gene Veith
#69. Christianity ... made, for nearly 1,500 years, persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed, heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons, dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage, the life without love or laughter ...
M. M. Mangasarian
#71. God's church is a Bible-centered church, and it grows strong under persecution.
Billy Graham
#72. Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.
Hugh Hefner
#73. The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.
Jimmy Carter
#75. So really, it was just as well that Godmother had caught up to me, in spite of my best efforts to avoid her. I'd hate to find out that the universe really wasn't conspiring against me. It would jerk the rug out from under my persecution complex. -Harry
Jim Butcher
#76. I went to church every Sunday ... I understood Christmas and what Easter was about. I understood the persecution of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ. I understood all that but I have to say that beyond that ... for me, my knowledge after that was quite vague.
Juan Pablo Di Pace
#77. You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.
George Eliot
#78. Social evils are dangerously contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women.
Fannie Barrier Williams
#79. As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God's word to justify bigotry and persecution.
Joyce Meyer
#80. After he has been following Christ for a long time, the disciple of Jesus will be asked, "Lacked ye anything?" and he will answer "Nothing, Lord." How could he when he knows that despite hunger and nakedness, persecution and danger, the Lord is always at his side?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#81. Colored students at the University of Minnesota partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy.
Harry J. Anslinger
#82. Give us a genuine Christianity that may provoke persecution, but will not provoke contempt.
A.C. Dixon
#83. Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.
Rose Macaulay
#84. The actual point in question, throughout the centuries of Christian persecution, has never been faith in God, but faith in the Bible as the word of God, and in the Church (this Church or that) as the interpreter of that word.
Joseph Campbell
#85. The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account,
Arthur Conan Doyle
#86. Narrow minds can develop as well through persecution as through benevolence; they can assure themselves of their power by tyrannizing cruelly or beneficially over others.
Honore De Balzac
#87. With patience and calm, persistence and stoicism, good handwriting and careful labeling, they would meet persecution, indignity, and hardship head-on.
Michael Chabon
#88. All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it.
Phyllis Bottome
#89. Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.
Joseph Brodsky
#90. Roosevelt was as much concerned to end the oppression of Jews as Lincoln was to end slavery during the Civil War; their priority in policy (whatever their personal compassion for victims of persecution) was not minority rights, but national power.
Howard Zinn
#91. Christianity is anything but safe. Jesus made clear that trouble and persecution stood in the future for His followers.
Dillon Burroughs
#92. There's not a European country the Jews haven't been thrown out of. When it happens that many times, it's not just persecution. THERE'S NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE.
Mark Collett
#93. I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government's policy towards people of color.
Assata Shakur
#94. Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians.
Conrad Black
#95. People talk about history and things like slavery, genocide, and religious persecution as horrors that happened in the past because we were ignorant. But nothing's changed. We still hate what we don't understand.
J. Matthew Nespoli
#96. Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#97. Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
David Suzuki
#98. Ever since you're little you hear this: 'The pilgrims left England to escape religious persecution and sneak religious freedom into the new world.' But even when you're little you're like, 'Umm.. Bullsh*t?'
Greg Proops
#99. President Obama understands that, as a nation founded by those who fled religious persecution, freedom of religion is central to who we are as Americans. Our rights are not given to us by government, they are endowed by our Creator.
Denis McDonough
#100. To charge Snowden with espionage is a severe form of political persecution.
Mark Weisbrot
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