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Salem Witch Trials Quotes

Browse 23 quotes about Salem Witch Trials.

Salem Witch Trials Quotes

“The above is stereotypical FMS rhetoric. It employs a formulaic medley of factual distortions, exaggerations, emotionally charged language and ideological codewords, pseudo-scientific assertions, indignant protestations of bigotry and persecution, mockering of religious belief, and the usual tiresome “witch hunt” metaphors to convince the reader that there can be no debating the merits of the case. No matter what the circumstances of the case, the syntax is always the same, and the plot line as predictable as a 1920's silent movie. Everyone accused of abuse is somehow the victim of overzealous religious fanatics, who make unwarranted, irrational, and self-serving charges, which are incredibly accepted uncritically by virtually all social service and criminal justice professionals assign to the case, who are responsible for "brainwashing" the alleged perpetrator or witnesses to the crime. This mysterious process of "mass hysteria" is then amplified in the media, which feeds back upon itself, which finally causes a total travesty of justice which the FMS people in the white hats are duty-bound to redress. By reading FMS literature one could easily draw the conclusion that the entire American justice system is no better than that of the rural south in the days of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. The Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century are always the touchstone for comparison.”

AbuseChild Sexual AbuseMisinformationRitual AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseWitch HuntFalse Memory SyndromeFmsfSalem Witch TrialsOverzealousCounter AttackSatanic PanicMass HysteriaRitual Abuse Myth
Book:Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social, and Political Considerations
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“Deprived of my shackles, I was unable to find my balance and I tottered like a woman drunk on cheap liquor. I had to learn how to speak again, how to communicate with my fellow creatures, and no longer be content with a word here and there. I had to learn how to look them in the eyes again. I had to learn how to do my hair again now that it had become a tangle of untidy snakes hissing around my head. I had to rub ointments on my dry, cracked, skin, which had become like a badly tanned hide. Few people have the misfortune to be born twice.”

WitchesIncarcerationSalem Witch TrialsTitubaReentryJustice Involved WomenReentry ProblemsReturning Citizen
Book:I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
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“He peered into the night-dark windows of the afflicted girls, whispering names and stirring fits into their dreams until their own screams awakened them. The girls concocted fantastic stories of witches and curses and torture at the hands of specters. More accusers joined their ranks without his nurturing, puppets of their own envy. Such imagination, such dedication to the destruction of their own. And all in his name. It touched his dark soul.”

DarkSalemSalem Witch Trials
Book:The Timeless Ones
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“People gave the heavens a voice, so they had something to ask for: a better harvest, a healthy child or a milder winter. God was hope, and mankind needed hope the way it needed warmth, food and ale. But with hope came disappointment. The downtrodden yearned for stories to explain their misfortunes, though what they really wanted was somebody to blame for their misery. It was impossible to set fire to the blight that had ruined your crops, but a blight was easily summoned by a witch, at which point any poor woman would do.”

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Book:The Devil and the Dark Water
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“It all makes you wonder what you would've done had you been kicking around back then. If a teen girl, would you have followed the herd? If the mother of eight dead babies like Ann Putnam Sr., would you have given yourself a few hard bruises and then gleefully joined in the accusing because what else could explain your misfortunes? If you were a judge and "It" Puritan Cotton Mather, would you have ridden all the way out from Cambridge to see for yourself just what in the heck was going on in Salem Village? Would you have allowed into evidence proof from both this world and the invisible one into which only the purest heart can see?”

WitchesSalem Witch Trials
Book:We Ride Upon Sticks
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“Even the best of us have certain psychological mechanisms that can suddenly kick in and turn us into monsters. That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things. It's distressingly easy for those mechanisms to be triggered, either consciously by demagogues, or naively by people who think they're trying to do the right thing. Which is why I think it's more akin to tic-tac-toe.”

PeopleThinkingTryingCertainTurnsEasyEventsMessagesMonstersTrialsPsychologicalRight ThingKicksBad ThingsWitchGood PeopleMechanismToesBad PeopleNazismTicsSalemWitch TrialsSalem Witch TrialsTic Tacs
Author:Neal Stephenson
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“- L, did you know we’re reenacting the Salem witch trials in English tomorrow? - Haven’t been memorizing your case file? Do you even look in your backpack anymore? - Did you know my dad is videotaping it? I do. Because I walked in on his lunch date with Mrs. English. - Ewww. - What should we do? - I guess we should start calling her Ms. English? - Not funny, L.”

KnowsShouldLooksCasesHavensDadTomorrowCallingMy DadTrialsWitchLunchFilesDid You KnowMemorizingSalemWitch TrialsSalem Witch Trials
Author:Kami Garcia
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“In his play depicting the Salem Witch Trials, the author illustrates profound psychological bullying. The ringleader of young girls suspected of unsavory conduct, frightens her friends into silence by warning: Now, look you; All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters, and that was all. ... Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.”

LooksPlayYoungNightGirlBlackSilenceTerribleProfoundEdgesBreatheTrialsPsychologicalBullyingWitchWarningReckoningRuthSalemWitch TrialsSalem Witch Trials
Author:Arthur Miller
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