Those Who Persecute You Quotes & Sayings

And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water? Is it because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife? ... Can we behold unmoved the science of England, the vital principle of her arts, struggling for existence, the meek and unarmed victim of political strife?
[Reviewing Charles Babbage's Book, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830)] — David Brewster

Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity. — Charles Caleb Colton

If my lips teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may exasperate to madness men they persecute and ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away. — Ned Kelly

I'd like you to know that I have forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and persecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again. — Jan Karon

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. — Jesus Christ

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. — Doris Lessing

We are all on the same road, some ahead of us and some behind. We do not always recognize ourselves as being among those who are struggling farther back, and misunderstand, scorn, and even persecute the ones who move ahead of us. History is littered with such as these: eccentrics, geniuses, idealists among those most noticeable. These change the world by force, though the change most often does not take place during their own time, they are so far ahead of it and therefore so rarely understood. — Nell Gavin

If we look at history, we will see that regimes which persecute [their people] do not remain standing. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Our personal afflictions involve the living God; the only way in which Satan can persecute or afflict God is through attacking the people of God. The only way we can have personal victory in the midst of these flying arrows raining down on us is to call upon the Lord for help. It is His strength, supplied to us in our weakness, that makes victory after victory possible. — Edith Schaeffer

Are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. 12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. — Anonymous

There are many people who in the name of faith or love persecute countless people around them. If I believe that my notion about God, about happiness, about nirvana is perfect, I want very much to impose that notion on you. I will say that if you don't believe as I do, you will not be happy. I will do everything I can to impose my notions on you, and therefore I will destroy you. I will make you unhappy for the whole of your life. We will destroy each other in the name of faith, in the name of love, just because of the fact that the objects of our faith and of our love are not true insight, are not direct experience of suffering and of happiness; they are just notions and ideas. — Thich Nhat Hanh

it is much easier to unite people around a Jesus who hates our enemies and blesses our wars than it is to unite people around a Jesus who calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. — Brian Zahnd

Nothing is more irreligious than to persecute the seekers of truth in order to keep up absurdities and superstitions of bygone ages. Nothing is more inhuman than the commission of 'devout cruelty' under the mask of love of God and man. — Kaiten Nukariya

Jesus Christ, who they go around telling everyone was God, was actually a Jew! and this fact, that absolutely kills me when I have to think about it, nobody else pays attention to. That he was a Jew, and they took a Jew and turned him into some kind of God after he is already dead, and then- this is what can make you absolutely crazy- then the dirty bastards turn around afterwards and who is the first one on their list to persecute? who haven't they left their hands off of to murder and to hate for two thousand years: The Jews! — Philip Roth

All these have suffered a great change since the expulsion of the Musulmans, the reason of which is obvious; for the Musulmans, conquerors of the Spaniards, did not persecute the conquered; while, on the other hand, the Spaniards, who conquered them, not only persecuted but deprived them of their possessions. It — George Power

This is why I am not religious. If and when we do learn the true secret of the universe, some kind of religion will be there to hide it. To cover it up. To persecute and shred, to burn and destroy. They stay in business by keeping us in the Dark Ages. — John Dunning

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason. — Voltaire

...Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you... — Olisa Ufondu

Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable. — George Bernard Shaw

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. — Octavia Butler

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger. — Gertrude Stein

Provoking separatist hatreds is an aggressive weed. We all have dirty hands and a broken heart. Put down your flag before you put down your weapons. If you must raise a flag, be sure it says, "We is better than you or I." We will not persecute, nor tolerate persecution. We will not dominate, nor tolerate subjugation. — Mikhayla Gracey

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones. — Nathanael Howe

When people become difficult to love, love them harder and pray for them even more. That's how you overcome evil with good. — Jeanette Coron

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. — Shelley Hitz

It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5) — Rob Bell

I do believe that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute you. I believe that there is power and strength in that. — Michael Moore

If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,-he will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine. — Henry Thomas Buckle

brings some blessings to unbelieving people. Jesus tells us, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44), and since there is no restriction in the context simply to pray for their salvation, and since the command to pray for our persecutors is coupled with a command to love them, it seems reasonable to conclude that God intends to answer our prayers even for our persecutors with regard to many areas of life. — Wayne A. Grudem

44But I say, love your enemies!* Pray for those who persecute you! — Anonymous

The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error. — Thomas B. Macaulay

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. — Thomas Paine

But I say to you, the Lord says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God. — Maximus The Confessor

The weak link-- she liked the ring of it. To seek the imperfection in the chain that keeps you in bondage. Taken individually, the link was not much. But in concert with its fellows, a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness. The people she chose, young and old, from the rich part of town or the more modest streets, did not individually persecute Cora. As a community, they were shackles. If she kept at it, chipping away at weak links wherever she found them, it might add up to something. — Colson Whitehead

It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities. — Paul Wolfowitz

One recognises that the partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice, pushes even decent men cruelly to persecute innocent targets. One recognises it, and yet nobody suggests getting rid of the organisations that generate such evils. — Simone Weil

It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too — Sigmund Freud

Persecuting Christians because of Jesus Christ is like a man who goes after the children of his enemy because he is indeed afraid of his enemy. Matthew 24:9 — Felix Wantang

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art. — Max Beckmann

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism. — Antonia Fraser

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them ... They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it. — Montesquieu

You must remember that we persecute nobody for religion. We regard religion as an error and fight it with education. — Mikhail Kalinin

What yells out at the US public ... is the incandescent hypocrisy of so many people who, in the name of free speech, persecute its practitioners if their opinions are conservative. — William F. Buckley Jr.

My personal attitude is this: I will stand for revival, unity and prayer; I will labor to restore healing and reconciliation between God's people. Yet, if all God truly wanted was to raise up one fully yielded son
a son who would refuse to be offended, refuse to react, refuse to harbor unforgiveness regardless of those who slander and persecute
I have determined to be that person. My primary goal in all things is not revival, but to bring pleasure to Christ. — Francis Frangipane

If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and furnish him with his orders: Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth and, diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child, settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting, worry and fret and madden the worn and tried mother who watches by the child and humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. — Mark Twain

It is iniquitous, unjust, and most impolitic to persecute for religion's sake. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy. — William Murray, 1st Earl Of Mansfield

Hitler and Mussolini even went so far as to persecute Esperanto speakers. — Bill Bryson

Then I read this: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:43-45). That's it! I was thunderstruck — Mosab Hassan Yousef

So why don't they face us ... examine our evidence, debate, talk ... act like real historians instead of thought-police? Why shut us out of the media, pass laws against our speaking, persecute us, sue us, and vilify us? — Randolph D. Calverhall

The four eaglets are my four sons who cease not to persecute me even unto death. The youngest of them, whom I now embrace with so much affection, will sometime in the end insult me more grievously and more dangerously than any of the others. — Henry II Of France

Who knows - I would like to think that I'd be a fantastic president, and I'd be extremely levelheaded, and I'd be very fair, and I wouldn't persecute people, and I'd listen to the people that disagreed with me and all the rest of it, but who knows. — Adam Rayner