Witch Trials Quotes

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.

When we learned about Salem at school, the whole thing was confusing. Because the idea of the witch hunt is used as a symbol to describe people searching for something that's basically untrue, it cemented in my mind as a kid that witches weren't 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.

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

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.

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.

At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.

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

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.

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.

Men feared witches and burned women.

Civill Wars of France made a million of Atheists, and 30000 Witches.

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

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.

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.

You know what happened the last time a group of people said, 'Screw it, we don't care what you think'? They got hung as witches.

The law against witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives.

'Dead Witch Walking' is basically a modern-day witch living in Cincinnati.

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

The law against witches does not prove there be any; …

One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to a hundred witches was ever burned or tortured.

I just love the idea of witches, in general. The whole concept of witches was to keep down the feminine rise in power that was happening, at the time. They created this concept of witches, so that they could burn women at the stake and keep them in their place, and now we've turned it around to empower women. That's very ironic. If they only knew that they created a weapon for us to use against them.

I think the thing that is most influential about 'Haxan' is the casting of the witches as just old women and the strength of that.

I went to Salem as many Halloweens as I possibly could.

Oh my God. You're a witch-hunter. I'm a witch. Hate to break it to you Daniel, but if you're a witch-hunter? You're doing it wrong." He gave me a sidelong smile. "Maybe it's not that kind of hunting." "Then you're definitely doing it wrong.