“The persecutorial impulse - 'the urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings as imagined agents of corruption and incarnations of evil' - seems to be hardwired into Western civilization.”

“...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.”

“...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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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