“Once available, the inquisitorial toolbox could be put to use by any authoritarian regime with the will and the means to unpack and use it.”

“...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.”

“What Hitler and Stalin had in common was the same aspiration that animated the first inquisitors - the simple but deadly notion that it was both possible and desirable to rid the world of anyone whom the regime deemed to be unworthy of life.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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