"Agatha Prenderghast of his Majesty's Province of Massachusetts, on this day you have been arraigned for the horrible crime of witchcraft witnessed by those whose testimonies have been heard. You have, by this court, been found... guilty! And it is passed on you, according to your grievous crimes... execution!"
— Judge Hopkins to Agatha Prenderghast, ParaNorman
"Quick to judge, quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand"
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand"
— Rush, "Witch Hunt"
"When he couldn't find any [witches to burn], the Duke widened the definition to any ugly woman who owned a cat. When he couldn't even find any of those, he made the women of the village hold a beauty contest. First prize was a night with him, last prize was a cat."
It was at this time that Art Miller came to our house with a book. “It’s all here,” he said, holding it up, “every scene.” The book was The Devil in Massachusetts, by Marion Starkey, and the play Miller saw in that book was to be The Crucible. He was excited by the prospect this book offered and urged that I read it immediately...I couldn’t read it just then, but Molly [Day Thatcher], a Miller-watcher from their first day, grabbed it, and the next thing I knew, she was criticizing the parallel Art had seen in the story of the Massachusetts witch trials and becoming indignant. “What’s going on here and now is not to be compared with the witch trials of that time,” she said to me and, first chance she got, to Miller. “Those witches did not exist. Communists do. Here, and everywhere in the world. It’s a false parallel. Witch hunt! The phrase would indicate that there are no Communists in the government, none in the big trade unions, none in the press, none in the arts, none sending money from Hollywood to Twelfth Street. No one who was in the Party and left uses that phrase. They know better.”
— Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life, a corrective on too literal use of metaphors.
Worf: But we know there is a traitor here. J'Dan has admitted his guilt.
Picard: That's true, and he will stand trial for his crimes.
Worf: Tarses has all but done the same.
Picard: How?
Worf: He refused to answer the question about his Romulan grandfather.
Picard: That is not a crime, Worf. Nor can we infer his guilt because he didn't respond.
Worf: Sir, if a man were not afraid of the truth, he would answer.
Picard: Oh, no. We cannot allow ourselves to think that. The Seventh Guarantee is one of the most important rights granted by the Federation. We cannot take a fundamental principle of the Constitution and turn it against a citizen.
Worf: Sir, the Federation does have enemies. We must seek them out.
Picard: Oh, yes. That's how it starts. But the road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think. Something is wrong here, Mister Worf. I don't like what we have become.
" Stay in the shadows
Cheer at the gallows
This is a round-up
This is a low-flying panic attack
Sing the song on the jukebox that goes
'Burn the witch'
'Burn the witch'
We know where you live"
Cheer at the gallows
This is a round-up
This is a low-flying panic attack
Sing the song on the jukebox that goes
'Burn the witch'
'Burn the witch'
We know where you live"
You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.
