Salem Quotes

• I think if I had lived back in Salem, I would have been burned at the stake

  Rose McGowan

  Thinking, Stakes, Burned

  FaceBook post by Rose McGowan from Aug 21, 2013

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred?

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Lonely, Massachusetts, Mystery

  Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (9 October 1931), in "Selected Letters III, 1929-1931" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (p. 423), 1971.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even the best of us have certain psychological mechanisms that can suddenly kick in and turn us into monsters. That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things. It's distressingly easy for those mechanisms to be triggered, either consciously by demagogues, or naively by people who think they're trying to do the right thing. Which is why I think it's more akin to tic-tac-toe.

  Neal Stephenson

  Thinking, Witch Trials, People

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem.

  John Updike

  Born, Right Time, Burned

  Laurie G. Kirszner, John Updike (1998). “A and P”, Heinle & Heinle Pub

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself

  James Madison

  Government, Land, House

  7 Copy quote

• That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.

  Neal Stephenson

  Witch Trials, People, Events

  "Neal Stephenson Speaks about His Latest Epic: 'Seveneves'". Interview With Adrian Liang, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 21, 2015.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Book, Reading, People

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln”, p.441, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents!

  Stacy Schiff

  Girl, Book, Witch Trials

  "Stacy Schiff, author of 'Cleopatra: A Life,' on the perfect biography subject". Interview with Elizabeth Taylor, www.chicagotribune.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

  Mark Twain

  People, Gentleman, Alive

  6 Copy quote

• We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!

  Arthur Miller

  Children, Crazy, Writing

  Arthur Miller (2015). “The Penguin Arthur Miller: Collected Plays (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.339, Penguin

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?

  Susan Abulhawa

  Mother, Home, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• North Carolina is a fascinating state, because you've got these urban areas. You've got the Piedmont Triangle - Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point.

  Julianne Malveaux

  North Carolina, Triangles, Urban

  Source: www.democracynow.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

  David Sedaris

  Sex, Writing, Class

  7 Copy quote

• Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn't know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they'll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.

  Rob Zombie

  Witch Trials, Average, Massachusetts

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, House, Empires

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• With its brutal excesses and reliance on snitches and finks as informants, I don't think it's far off-kilter to describe the modern-day drug war as oddly similar to the Salem witch trials.

  Joel Miller

  War, Thinking, Witch Trials

  11 Copy quote

• - L, did you know we’re reenacting the Salem witch trials in English tomorrow? - Haven’t been memorizing your case file? Do you even look in your backpack anymore? - Did you know my dad is videotaping it? I do. Because I walked in on his lunch date with Mrs. English. - Ewww. - What should we do? - I guess we should start calling her Ms. English? - Not funny, L.

  Kami Garcia

  Dad, Witch Trials, Lunch

  4 Copy quote

• I went to School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and we had a bunch of singing classes. My first job in New York was an Off-Broadway musical.

  Anna Camp

  Art, Jobs, New York

  "Anna Camp Pushes Her Boundaries in 'Pitch Perfect' and 'The Mindy Project'". Interview with Mark Svartz, www.backstage.com. October 9, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• What exists beneath the sea?I'd always pictured it in colors of emerald and aquamarine, where black velvet fish with sequined eyes swim among plankton.But, when my eyes adjust, I see gray stones, lost anchors, wet wood, buttons, hooks, and eyes, the salem witches who wouldn't float, stars and stripes, missing vessels, windup toys, the souls of Romeo and Juliet, peaches, cream, pistons, screams, cages of ribs and birds, tunnels, nutcracker soldiers, satin bows, drugstore signs, Pandora box ripped open at its hinges.

  Kelly Easton

  Stars, Eye, Color

  Kelly Easton (2001). “The Life History of a Star”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lincoln's removal from New Salem to Springfield and his entrance into a law partnership with Major John T. Stuart begin a distinctively new period in his career.

  John George Nicolay

  Law, Careers, Partnership

  John George Nicolay (2008). “A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln: Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: a History: Easyread Large Edition”, p.40, ReadHowYouWant.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In his play depicting the Salem Witch Trials, the author illustrates profound psychological bullying. The ringleader of young girls suspected of unsavory conduct, frightens her friends into silence by warning: Now, look you; All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters, and that was all. ... Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.

  Arthur Miller

  Girl, Bullying, Night

  7 Copy quote

• Lincoln's stature and strength, his intelligence and ambition - in short, all the elements which gave him popularity among men in New Salem, rendered him equally attractive to the fair sex of that village.

  John George Nicolay

  Sex, Ambition, Men

  John George Nicolay (2008). “A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln: Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: a History: Easyread Large Edition”, p.46, ReadHowYouWant.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The parochial snobbery of these people was partly responsible for their failure to convert the Indians. Probably they also preferred to take land from heathens rather than from fellow Christians. At any rate, very few Indians were converted, and the Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devil's last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand. To the best of their knowledge the American forest was the last place on earth that was not paying homage to God.

  Arthur Miller

  Christian, Home, Land

  Arthur Miller (2015). “The Crucible”, p.7, Bloomsbury Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are freaky talking mannequins in the Salem Witch Museum that recite the Lord's Prayer and while they do resemble shrunken apples they nevertheless help the visitor understand how hard it must have been for the condemned to say the line about forgiving those who trespass against us.

  Sarah Vowell

  Prayer, Museums, Talking

  Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source