It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?
Persecution is a tribute the great must always pay for preeminence.
That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Yes great people are always subject to persecution and always getting into straits.