How to Kill a Witch Quotes

“No matter how terrible, history must be learned from and remembered.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“It’s the twenty-first century, and we’re still banging on about gender equality? Yes. Yes, we are. And we’re going to keep banging on about it until it’s sorted.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“When the going gets tough in any society, it is the most vulnerable who are accused of causing the damage.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Today, we’re much less likely in our secular, Western society to say that women are being seduced by the Devil, but we still see women persecuted, marginalized, and attacked.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Janet Horne was the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Great Britain.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“The last thing our visitors see as they leave the museum is called our ‘witch-hunt wall,’ and it’s a formula we use to break down former witch hunts,” said Rachel. “The formula is fear plus a trigger equals a scapegoat.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“This may seem unrelated, but we need to be clear that the gendered aspect of the witch trials did not go away after the trials. The fear and hatred seen in our society over three hundred years later are a straight line drawn from those days and attitudes. We must find a way to break this inheritance and put it firmly in the past, and we argue that understanding the drivers of the trials and the part that was played by embedded, often unconscious ideas about women, their worth, and their "danger" is an excellent method of confronting the past and changing the future.”
― Zoe Venditozzi, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“We must take great care to guard against a new iteration of the witch trials.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“The belief in magic, then, real as it was, did not cause the bloody horror of the witchcraft trials. The causes of those? Oh, they were very much man-made.”
― Zoe Venditozzi, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Just as in the days of the witch trials, as the global situation worsens, people become more and more fearful. The current febrile political environment often veers dangerously to the right. Many of us anxiously contemplate the present and future realities of the climate crisis, struggle with the financial and social pressures of modern life, watch on in impotent horror at the seemingly constant worldwide conficts — all while actively participating in the emotionally heightening petri dish that is social media
We must take great care to guard against a new iteration of the witch trials.”
― Zoe Venditozzi, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“A state-sanctioned murder ae innocent folks”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“This type of confidence goes a long way—if you act like you’re right, people will generally believe you, even without evidence. We need only to look at recent British and American politicians to see how this confidence trick continues to work.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“It was only by the strenuous efforts of godly people that we managed to all but banish quarrelsome women—sorry, we mean witches—from our society.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Throughout history, it appears that witches thrive in times of social unrest.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Discovering that we both had a ridiculously detailed knowledge of real-life murders, we came up with a theory about why women in particular love true crime. In our view, it was down to a combination of the pragmatism of learning how not to get abducted and murdered (always useful), coupled with an element of bearing witness to all the women who were not so lucky.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“was so much more violent than Salem. There should be memorials all over the place. The names should be recognized. This is something that’s so relevant today. It’s very much important for us to learn about now.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy

“People thought Matthew Hopkins was a lawyer because he spoke so well. This type of confidence goes a long way – behold the ongoing phenomenon of the temerity of mediocre men. If you act like you’re right, people will generally believe the confidence even without evidence. We only need to look at recent British and American politicians to see how this confidence trick still works.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy

“The point Liv makes about the parallels between seventeenth-century witch trials and the experience of women today is striking. Women are still too often seen as potentially dangerous and so must be controlled.241 When fearful men are running courts”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Janet Horne was the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Great Britain. While there’s a stone marking the location of her execution”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Witnesses claimed both to see the specters of the accused practicing witchcraft and to be attacked by them in their spectral form. Just to be clear: it was accepted as evidence admissible in law for a witness to testify that they had had a dream or a vision of an accused person’s spirit tormenting them”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Do not let the patriarchy silence you. We need to be sure we elect those who will actively protect our safety”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Despite Louise’s take on Knox”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“when the going gets tough in any society, it is the vulnerable that are accused of causing the damage, as an easy target to avoid dealing with the greater problems of inequality.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy

“It would appear that the misplaced confidence of delusional men is not a new phenomenon.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy

“The fact is that with the burning of the accuseds’ bodies and their deaths being recorded in the official documents in only the most basic of terms—in some cases not even noting the names of those executed and just recording that “sundry witches” were burned—history quickly forgot them. Recordkeeping was often very poor, and there was no benefit to recording the details of a witch. They weren’t so much written out of history as never properly written into it. Although we know thousands were accused, there are rarely full records of what happened.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“but we can remember Lilias for who she was as a person: a poor, old, probably ostracized, and lonely woman who was accused of something for which she wasn’t guilty; a woman imprisoned and harassed by the very society that ought to have protected her; and someone who, even in death, was further exploited for the entertainment of wealthy men. Her story and life are important to hold in our memories—both out of respect for her and in hopes what happened to her will never be repeated.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“The good news for those who can’t make it to the Salem Witch Museum in person is that there’s an excellent online tour, which anyone can access—so long as they possess the heretical magic of Wi-Fi.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Not all prickers were men. Scotland’s other most notorious brodder, Christian Caddell, was a woman, most likely in her late twenties or early thirties. In the early 1660s, Scotland was in such a frenzy over witch activity that work in witch finding was readily available for those who wanted it. It’s believed Caddell was inspired to take on the profession when she saw Kincaid at work in Newburgh, Fife. 124”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“One of the most unsettling features of the witch trials was how guilt was “proved” by searching for and (almost always) finding the Devil’s mark somewhere on the accused’s body. People viewed this evidence the same way as we view DNA today, in that it was believed to be compelling proof of guilt. The idea of sin showing up physically on the body goes back to ancient times: you see it in medieval descriptions of “leprous” skin and in beliefs that warts and other skin irregularities were outward signs of evil. When Anne Boleyn was executed, there was much discussion about how many warts she had, and rumors abounded she had an extra finger (a certain sign of witchcraft).”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women

“Sadly, many women died during their prison stay due to the conditions they were kept in, their poor health, the torture, or more likely a combination of all three. Doubtless there were suicidal deaths attributed to the Devil that were much more man-made.”
― Claire Mitchell, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women