Salem Quotes:

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

- Rose McGowan

source: FaceBook post by Rose McGowan from Aug 21, 2013

topic: Thinking, Stakes, Burned, Salem

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

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

topic: Lonely, Massachusetts, Mystery, Salem

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

source: Source: www.omnivoracious.com

topic: Thinking, Witch Trials, People, Tics, Tic Tacs

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

- John Updike

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

topic: Born, Right Time, Burned, Salem

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

topic: Government, Land, House, Containing, Public Lands

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

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

topic: Witch Trials, People, Events, Salem, Salem Witch Trials

If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Confidence, Perseverance, Half, Salem

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

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

topic: Girl, Book, Massachusetts, Witch Trials, Salem

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

topic: People, Gentleman, Alive, Salem

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

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

topic: Children, Crazy, Writing, Keys To The Kingdom, Salem

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

topic: Mother, Home, Mean, Toothless, Salem

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

source: Source: www.democracynow.org

topic: North Carolina, Triangles, Urban, Salem, High Points

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

topic: Sex, Writing, Class, Salem, Lower Class

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

topic: Average, Massachusetts, Trials, Witch Trials, Field Trip

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

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

topic: Men, House, Empires, Fixture, Salem

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

topic: War, Thinking, Witch Trials, Informants, Snitch

- 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

topic: Dad, Witch Trials, Lunch, Memorizing, Salem

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

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

topic: Art, Jobs, New York, Salem, Broadway Musical

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

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

topic: Stars, Eye, Tunnels, Nutcrackers, Satin

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

source: 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

topic: Law, Careers, Partnership, Removal, Salem

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

topic: Girl, Bullying, Night, Witch Trials, Salem

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

source: 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

topic: Sex, Ambition, Men, Stature, Salem

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

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

topic: Christian, Home, Land, Last Place, Salem

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

topic: Prayer, Talking, Apples, Salem