PERSECUTION

Related Subjects: Cruelty, Despotism, Dictatorship, Prison, Tolerance, Tyranny

1. Persecution of whole groups of people, based solely upon disapproval of the beliefs they hold and express, is wholly un-American and can only be destructive of the very foundations of democracy.—JOHN M. COFFEE
   

2. In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much, have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.—C. C. COLTON
   

3. Transgressors . . . that discompose, and tear the body of man with violence, are those inhuman persecutors, who with racks, and tortures, and prisons, and fires, and exquisite inquisitions, throw down the bodies of the true God's true servants, to the idolatrous worship of their imaginary gods; that torture men into hell, and carry them through the inquisition into damnation.—JOHN DONNE, Sermons
   

4. The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run uphill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob.—EMERSON
   

5. Persecution does not make people more affable or more entertaining. That is a sufficient reason for not persecuting people.—LANCELOT HOGBEN, Dangerous Thoughts
   

6. Wherever you see persecution, there is more than a probability that truth is on the persecuted side.—HUGH LATIMER
   

7. For belief or practice in religion no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force whatever.—MILTON
   

8. The resource of bigotry and intolerance, when convicted of error, is always the same; silenced by argument, it endeavors to silence by persecution, in old times by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.—C. SIMMONS