Frances Hill > Quotes

“Like any other human activity, religion can be abused and made to exacerbate our frightened egoism instead of helping us to transcend it.”
― Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials

“No one has ever satisfactorily explained why witches have mostly been women. Since witch accusers have also often been women—probably more often than men—the explanation cannot simply be man's fear and hatred of females.”
― Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials

“Among the tricks the mind can play on itself in a hysterical state is to believe and not believe simultaneously. But half-belief is quite different from deliberate fraud.”
― Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials

“those it prizes from any aggression they arouse by deflecting it.”
― Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials

“The Salem witch-hunt, like all witch-hunts, was conducted not by an individual acting alone but by a group. All types of groups are capable of behaving in ways that would shock the consciences of their individual members. But those that espouse a morality of censure and blame rather than compassion and empathy are utterly merciless toward objects of hatred. The more a group idealizes itself, its own values, and its God, the more it persecutes both other groups and the dissenters in its midst. In doing so it protects”
― Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials