Heretics were often most bitterly persecuted for their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that irritated the righteous to madness. Why can they not yield on so trifling a matter? (Quote by - Leo Shestov)

Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors. He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose, they might take my property or confiscate my earnings, what would my family do, how would they survive?' He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty! (Quote by - W. Vaughn Ellsworth)

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man. (Quote by - Tacitus)

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. (Quote by - Plato)

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it. (Quote by - Howard Mumford Jones)

No man survives when freedom fails, The best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry 'appease, appease' Are hanged by those they tried to please. (Quote by - Hiram Mann)

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs. (Quote by - Richard Le Gallienne)

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason. (Quote by - Voltaire)

It is iniquitous, unjust, and most impolitic to persecute for religion's sake. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy. (Quote by - William Murray)

It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." (Quote by - Albert Barnes)

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love. (Quote by - Frank Moore Colby)

The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda. (Quote by - Strom Thurmond)

It is an inherent and inseparable inconvenience in persecution that it knows not where to stop. (Quote by - Robert Hall)

Whoever is right, the persecutor must be wrong. (Quote by - William Penn)

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. (Quote by - Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent. (Quote by - Daniel Defoe)

Persecution often does in this life what the last day will do completely--separate the wheat from the tares. (Quote by - Lord Milner)

Persecution is disobeying the most solemn injunction of Christianity, under the sham plea of upholding it. (Quote by - Paul Chatfield)

Jews have suffered persecution from misguided Christians who tortured the Jews for their part in killing Christ. These Christians forgot that Christ died because of the sins of all men. (Quote by - Sargent Shriver)

Love of justice in the generality of men is only the fear of suffering from injustice. (Quote by - Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld)

There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed--to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own. (Quote by - Charles Caleb Colton)

In 1933, the Nazis came to power and the more systematic persecution of the Jews followed quickly. Laws were enacted which excluded Jewish children from higher education in public schools. (Quote by - Jack Steinberger)

Persecution, whenever it occurs, establishes only the power and cunning of the persecutor, not the truth and worth of his belief. (Quote by - H. M. Kallen)

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. (Quote by - Graham Greene)

I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run, is a more deadly poison than straightforward persecution. (Quote by - Francis Schaeffer)