“...heresy was often perceived by the Church as a financial or political threat rather than merely a theological one.”

“All the weaponry and tactics that have been deployed in the war on terror are justified by precisely the same theological stance once invoked by the war on heresy.”

“Indeed, the greatest single innovation of the Spanish Inquisition was to turn heresy from a thought-crime into a blood-crime...”

“Like the victims of the historical Inquisition and its other modern equivalents, the men and women who were targeted during the McCarthy era were not guilty of any wrongful acts; rather, they were accused only of thought-crimes.”

“...human beings as a species have never failed to find reasons to regard one another with fear and loathing and thus to offer violence to one another.”

“Above all, we cannot and should not try to distance ourselves from any of these inquisitions by reassuring ourselves that no abuse of 'moral justice' could occur in the American democracy.”

“...free-associative sexual libel...is typical of the impulses of religious authoritarians to demonize all heretics by attributing to them every manner of outrage that a perverse human mind could imagine.”