Who said: "The history of persecution is an endeavor to cheat nature;
to make water run uphill to twist a rope of sand?"

Hi luvyales-ga,

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) in the essay "Compensation." 
The quote is actually slightly different:

"The history of persecution is a history of endeavours to cheat
nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand."

The whole essay is available on the rwe.org website devoted to Emerson's works.

http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-1st_Series_03_Compensation.htm

It's also on the Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts site.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/compensation.htm


Search Strategy

"twist a rope of sand"

A search for this phrase in quotation marks yielded several pages
attributing the quotation to Emerson.

"ralph waldo emerson" "history of persecution"

This search led me to a message in a Yahoo! Group discussing Emerson's philosophy.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emersonsphilosophy/message/459

From this message I learned that the sentence was in the
"Compensation" essay.  Then I found the text of the essay with:

"ralph waldo emerson" compensation

--efn