A list of quotations, witch related. What Witch quotations have you come across?
“Rebellion is like witchcraft. That’s what it is, it’s like witchcraft.”
Missouri State Rep. Jean Dixon, on labeling “offensive music”. USA Today, March 20, 1990
“It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
Pat Robertson, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1993
“After ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise — perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it — and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.”
Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger”, 1922
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry…..There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
– “Bible Teaching and Religious Practice,” Europe and Elsewhere -Mark Twain
Wicked Witch of the West: I’m melting, melting! Who would have thought a little brat like you could destroy such beautiful wickedness.
Wicked Witch of the West: I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too.
Bedevere: What makes you think she’s a witch?
Peasant: Well she turned me into a newt!
Bedevere: A newt?
Peasant: I got better.
Crowd: Burn her anyway!
-Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail
Bedevere: And how do you burn witches?
Crowd: With more witches!
Bedevere: No,no,no…And why do witches burn?
Peasant: Because…there made…of…wood?
Bedevere: Precisely, so how do we know if she’s made fo wood?
Peasant: Biuld a bridge out of her!
Bedevere: Ah, but can you also not build a bridge out of stone?
-Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail
WITCHES: The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about:
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm’s wound up.
-Macbeth, I, iii
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. – Virginia Woolf
I will show you a love potion without drug or any witch?s spell: If you wish to be loved, love. ~ Hecato
Whether they admit it as much or denied it, they all without exception in the depths of their hearts believed that there was a doctor, or a herbalist, or some old witch of a woman somewhere, whom you only had to find and get that medicine?to be saved?. It just wasn’t possible that their lives were already doomed. However much we laugh at miracles when we are strong, healthy and prosperous, if life becomes so hedged and cramped that only a miracle can save us, then we clutch at this unique, exceptional miracle and–believe in it! -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1968
From the Bible:
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Ex. 22:18)
Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them. (Lev. 19:31)
All that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. (Deut. 18:12)
I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers. (Mal. 3:5)
Thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness. (Acts 13:10)
Originally posted to ‘BackWash: Where the Wild Things Are’ newsletter, February, 13, 2003.