“Then as now, demonization of the victim is the necessary precondition for genocide.” — Jonathan Kirsch Demonization Copy Share Image
“No offense against moral order was too trivial to escape the attention of the Spanish Inquisition.” — Jonathan Kirsch Character Copy Share Image
“Above all, we cannot and should not try to distance ourselves from any of these inquisitions by reassuring ourselves that no abuse… — Jonathan Kirsch American democracy Copy Share Image
“Precisely because the Inquisition provides a blueprint for building and operating the machinery of persecution...the Inquisition was and still is a danger… — Jonathan Kirsch Freedom Copy Share Image
“...the workings of the Inquisition did not fundamentally change over its six-hundred-year history. The Inquisition was a machine with interchangeable parts, just… — Jonathan Kirsch Computers Copy Share Image
“Once available, the inquisitorial toolbox could be put to use by any authoritarian regime with the will and the means to unpack… — Jonathan Kirsch Copy Share Image
“...heresy was often perceived by the Church as a financial or political threat rather than merely a theological one.” — Jonathan Kirsch Heresy Copy Share Image
“All the weaponry and tactics that have been deployed in the war on terror are justified by precisely the same theological stance… — Jonathan Kirsch Heresy Copy Share Image
“Indeed, the greatest single innovation of the Spanish Inquisition was to turn heresy from a thought-crime into a blood-crime...” — Jonathan Kirsch Inquisition Copy Share Image
“...human beings as a species have never failed to find reasons to regard one another with fear and loathing and thus to… — Jonathan Kirsch Copy Share Image
“What Hitler and Stalin had in common was the same aspiration that animated the first inquisitors - the simple but deadly notion… — Jonathan Kirsch Dreams Copy Share Image
“The persecutorial impulse - 'the urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings as imagined agents… — Jonathan Kirsch Copy Share Image
“Like the victims of the historical Inquisition and its other modern equivalents, the men and women who were targeted during the McCarthy… — Jonathan Kirsch History Copy Share Image
“...free-associative sexual libel...is typical of the impulses of religious authoritarians to demonize all heretics by attributing to them every manner of outrage… — Jonathan Kirsch Copy Share Image
