Persecution Quotes - Page 14

• Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East.

  Elaine Pagels

  Christian, Blood, Names

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• I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.

  Salman Rushdie

  Revenge, Writing, Artist

  Source: pen.org

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• The persecution of the innovator and protestant has always been inspired by fear on the part of constituted authority of having its infallibility questioned and its power undermined.

  Emma Goldman

  Inspired, Authority, Infallibility

  Alphonso Lingis, Emma Goldman (1996). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Humanities Press International

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• 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

  Spiritual, Religious, Religion

  George Washington (1837). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. V. Speeches and messages to Congress, proclamations, and addresses”, p.155

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• Not to abide in Jesus’ love would mean that we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. We look at our circumstances - perhaps persecution or disease or abandonment - and we conclude that we are not loved by Jesus anymore. That’s the opposite of abiding in the love of Jesus. So abiding in his love means continuing to believe, moment by moment, that we are loved.

  John Piper

  Jesus, Believe, Mean

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• When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Godly, Men, Christ

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2015). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.44, SCM Press

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• My question would be whether there is active persecution of atheists.

  Barack Obama

  Atheist, Would Be, Active

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

  Tom Stoppard

  Enlightened, Fine, Intrigued

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.41, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

  James Buchan

  Ignorance, Self, Enlightenment

  "Freedoms in the balance" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2006.

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• The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.

  John Shelby Spong

  Christian, Party, Hero

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• All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

  John Shelby Spong

  Religious, War, Religion

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• Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

  Alice Walker

  Israel, People, Territory

  "Letter from Alice Walker to Publishers at Yediot Books". www.pacbi.org. June 9, 2012.

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• Jews survived all the defeats, expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people, even the Holocaust itself, because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear.

  Jonathan Sacks

  People, Holocaust, One Day

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• 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.

  Jack Steinberger

  Education, Children, School

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• Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it.

  Khalil Gibran

  Hurt, Truth, Fall

  "The Secrets of the Heart". Book by Khalil Gibran. Translated by Anthony R. Ferris, 1947.

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• If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Fire, Light

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.110

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• No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.

  Tobsha Learner

  Strong, Aunt, Feminist

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• 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

  Pain, Men, Animal

  William Cowper (1872). “The poetical works of William Cowper: Complete ed., with memoir, explanatory notes etc”, p.318

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• Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.

  Frances Wright

  Vices, Speech, Opinion

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of Popular Lectures”, p.128

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• There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.

  John Milton

  Truth, Tolerance, Religion

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• Afflictions, persecutions, imprisonments, and death, we must expect, according to the scriptures, which tell us that the blood of those whose souls were under the altar could not be avenged on them that dwell on the earth, until their brethren should be slain as they were.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Blood, Soul, Affliction

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• More Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians
  than had died before in all the persecutions.

  Ramsay MacMullen

  Christian, Hands, Died

  Ramsay MacMullen (1999). “Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries”, p.14, Yale University Press

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• There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts - and the traditional persecution of men for their religion... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.

  Thomas Szasz

  Men, Differences, Feelings

  "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1970.

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• The argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Discovery, Doe

  Bertrand Russell (1935). “Religion and science”

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• Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.

  Austin O'Malley

  Pruning, Orchard

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