Robert Eggers Quotes

In the middle ages when people were convinced there were witches, they certainly found them.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed.

Basically, I was always disappointed that the witches weren't real when we learned about the Salem witch trials.

Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn't know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they'll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.

The Taliban is the Muslim version of the Salem witch trials.

I think if I had lived back in Salem, I would have been burned at the stake

I was interested in what was really going on in Salem at that time, and I resolved to investigate this seemingly unorthodox treatment of the people and the period.

My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents!

In the 16th and 17th centuries, as many as 60,000 people were executed in Europe as suspected witches. But it would be nice to think that centuries of advances in science and education have made people less prey to phantasms and falsehoods.

Imagine: in the medieval ages, there was no evidence of how the history of mankind has been affected by witchcraft. But there is significant factual history of how brutality and sadism of mankind have been displayed in the most obscene manner in the name of witch-hunt.

I don't want to act like the witch trials all over New England were warranted, but when you live in a culture that believes something is real, it feels very real.

Redheads were particularly persecuted during the European witch trials of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The colour was associated with the devil, and the pale skin which most redheads have was thought unnatural and deathly.

Who are taking to the witch burning Saturday night?

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

It's a bit like the search for witches. You can always find them.

The Reign of the Witches

When it came to the burning of witches, Germany was home to a kind of pre-Holocaust, where at least 100,000 people were executed for witchcraft, usually by public burning.

But in the Middle Ages people were convinced there were witches. They looked for them and they certainly found them.

If she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem.

That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

When you look at the original 'Paradise Lost' film, you see three kids who can't defend themselves, being persecuted in a medieval way - witchcraft, satanic worship. It was kind of primitive.

The number of witches had everywhere become enormous.

Witches were burned and killed in Scotland and England for centuries before what happened in Salem.

The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things [witches and witchcraft] are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

Those … who let the witches escape, or who do not punish them with the utmost rigor, may rest assured that they will be abandoned by God to the mercy of the witches. And the country which shall tolerate this will be scourged with pestilences, famines, and wars.