“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.”

“No offense against moral order was too trivial to escape the attention of the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Precisely because the Inquisition provides a blueprint for building and operating the machinery of persecution...the Inquisition was and still is a danger to human life and human liberty.”

“...the workings of the Inquisition did not fundamentally change over its six-hundred-year history. The Inquisition was a machine with interchangeable parts, just as its inventors had intended...”

“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.”

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