Cult Quotes

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult: If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes.”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America

“The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited

“If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not a logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are a whole and you are a part. You are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character". It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world.

Yet without a proper ego nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine, or cast a shadow without a real physical object. But once you've consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there?

At this point you receive a new narrative from the person to whom you have entrusted your ego. You've handed over the real thing, so what comes back is a shadow. And once your ego has merged with another ego, your narrative will necessarily take on the narrative created by that ego.

Just what kind of narrative?

It needn't be anything particularly fancy, nothing complicated or refined. You don't need to have literary ambitions. In fact, the sketchier and simpler the better. Junk, a leftover rehash will do. Anyway, most people are tired of complex, multilayered scenarios-they are a potential letdown. It's precisely because people can't find any fixed point within their own multilayered schemes that they're tossing aside their own self-identity.”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“No evil ever came from a woman’s womb that wasn’t placed there first by a man.’... Tantie Neptune, Lucifer's Key by Charles A. Cornell, due 2013”
― Charles A. Cornell

“Some people with DID present their narratives of sadistic abuse in a quite matter-of-fact way, without perceptible affect. This may sometimes be done as a way of protecting themselves, and the listener, from the emotional impact of their experience. We have found that people describing trauma in a flat way, without feeling, are usually those who have been more chronically abused, while those with affect still have a sense of self that can observe the tragedy of betrayal and have feelings about it. In some cases, this deadpan presentation can also be the result of cult training and brainwashing. Unfortunately, when a patient describes a traumatic experience without showing any apparent emotion, it can make the listener doubt whether the patient is telling the truth.
(page 119, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Bravery isn't when you go looking for trouble; bravery is when trouble comes looking for you.”
― P.I. Barrington, Final Deceit

“Human psychology is that anything you do in a group feels right. People as a group can kill someone and call it religious because it feels right to them. Religion and righteousness are not the same thing. Religion is about going beyond right and wrong and seeing things as they are without any prejudices and judgements.”
― Shunya

“What’s a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.”
― Robert Altman

“-You said this wasn't a cult.
-Secret society. There's a difference.
-Not from where I'm standing.
-Then take a seat.”
― Jennifer Bosworth, Struck

“You wanted the truth. Or are you afraid of it now?”
― Courtney Summers, The Project

“But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow.”
― Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New

“I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the world, because when they become a renunciate, they discard themselves totally, thereby abandoning the world. In other words, Aum is a collection of people who have accepted the end. People who continue to hold out hope for the near future still have an attachment to the world. If you have attachments, you will not discard your Self, but for Renunciates it's as if they've leaped right off the cliff. And taking a giant leap like that feels good. They lose something - but gain something in return.”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“In my view the study of fairy origins assumes a greater degree of importance than popular opinion is wont to concede to it. Indeed, the ideas associated with it strike at the very roots of human belief and primitive methods of reasoning. It is scarcely to be questioned that the explanation of fairy origins is of the utmost value to the better comprehension of primitive religion. Later it will be made clear that, for the writer at least, the whole tradition of Faerie reveals quite numerous and excellent proofs of its former existence as a primitive and separate cult and faith, more particularly as regards its appearance and tradition in these islands.”
― Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins

“Religion, like science, is only noteworthy when it emphasizes a matter of what is true rather than whose belief is greater or lesser or which deity works for whom. Sincere religion and tested science are similar in that their assertions can be argued logically and objectively; otherwise, we get false cults and babble.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“That’s all religion is. Strategy.”
― Stephanie Oakes, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

“The fear of psychiatry is one of the hardest ideas to shake when you escape from the mind-prison.”
― Mike Rinder, A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology

“But the thing nobody ever tells you about the shepherd analogy is that shepherds always eat their sheep in the end.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“Oh, Bunny, I love you.
I love you, Bunny.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“So do you want to be a passenger in someone else’s narrative?
“No?”
“You want to be empowered.”
“You want creative agency.” “You want agency, period. Control.” “Over your art.” “Over your life, Bunny.” “All aspects of your life- physical, emotional, mental, spiritual… even-“ “You want to fuck, not be fucked.” Victoria says.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“But we must not let our judgment about primitive men be influenced too far by the analogy with neurotics. Differences must also be taken into account. Of course the sharp division between thinking and doing as we draw it does not exist either with savages or with neurotics. But the neurotic is above all inhibited in his actions; with him the thought is a complete substitute for the dead. Primitive man is not inhabited, the thought is directly converted into the deed, the deed is for him so to speak rather a substitute for the thought, and for that reason I think we may well assume in the case we are discussing, though without vouching for the absolute certainty to the decision, that "in the beginning was the deed.”
― Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

“After fifteen years of being forced to worship a Prophet I never believed in, sacrifice for a God I didn't love, and live a life in a religious prison camp, where they controlled my every thought and movement, I was drowning. It didn't matter how much loved and didn't want to disappoint my parents. If I didn't come up for breath soon, I wouldn't survive. But how could I tell the people I loved that I was rejecting their world, and everything they believed in, forever? That I was prepared to never see them again because I didn't have faith? That I was willing to go to Hell to escape them? That I was choosing me over them? I couldn't do it.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“I thought about a game we loved to play called The Heavenly City. All the kids would design our mansions in Heaven, the ultimate reward we were told we'd be granted in exchange for all the deprivations and pain during our lives on Earth. Different kids had different dreams: Many wanted a house all to themselves, all the food they could imagine. And typical kid desires too: pets, toys, candy. All the things we never had. But not me. I didn't care about streets of gold or all the clothes in the world, or the real jewelry that Dorothea and the other girls fancied. I wanted books. I had a secret dream that my mansion in Heaven would be a giant library, beautiful, with tall shelves in every room, filled with every book that had ever been written. I pictured myself like the cartoon Belle, a sparkling girl with a worldly name that didn't come from anywhere in the Bible and meant beautiful, who'd been gifted the most precious thing I could imagine- the freedom to read, the ability to teach herself anything she wanted. Even though she was a prisoner in the Beast's castle, Belle had the freedom of her own mind.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“I understood that girls were supposed to sleep without underwear because we had to “air out” the smelly and disgusting parts of ourselves, but I still burned with rage every night when the Uncles, especially Uncle Jerry, came into our dorms to do panty-checks.”
― Daniella Mestyanek Young, Uncultured: A Memoir

“There's only one thing worse than the egoic me, and that's the egoic us.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Living a Life of Inner Peace

“A dark well of the darkest wishes.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Rosie

“One hell of a love spell that witch cast on me.”
― Jonathan Dunne, Rosie

“- Can you keep secrets?
- Yesss.
- We are going to make one of the biggest coffeeshops in Barcelona with my boss, Adam.
- Realllllly?
- This Adam guy is kind of my friend and kind of my boss, but I don't trust him; he is a bad guy. “Bad to the bone.” His father is an even darker figure. I am pretty sure that both have killed before, hired to kill people.
- I am from Buenos Airessss.
- I understand honey but you don’t know this kind of people, these f…g desert roses.
- There are Jewish people in Argentina too.
- I am sure, baby, but these are not regular Jewish people, not regular Israeli people. These people are dark. Hocus-pocus. Criminal minds. Do you understand?
- I guessss.
- There are a lot of criminals in this town. They will try to take our club away, just like the Camorra is taking away other people's clubs. Just like that. Do you understand?
- Yessss.
- I know them; they are one of my clients. If there is anyone in the world who could make a deal with them, it would be me and Adam. He cannot cross me and I cannot cross him either. I would never do that. I am not sure about him though what is on his mind, I can tell there is something he is orchestrating I just don’t know what exactly, but he is as fishy as Sabrina. The problem is that only my ex-girlfriend knows about my signature on the non-profit organization, which is the base of the coffeeshop, the marijuana grow and the smoker club. Do you understand?
- Yesssss.
- We are talking about millions of Euros monthly cashflow. Do you understand?
- Yesssss.
- By telling you everything now, you are becoming my trusted; your life is in danger too if they manage to find a gap between us. Do you understand?
- Yesssss.
- I'm not sure what they're up to. They owe me already more money than anyone in this town would murder for. Do you understand?
- Yesssss.
- Now you know about it, too. Sabrina didn't care; she didn't think I would make it happen. She doesn’t know about the place. Only you know about it and us. But she will figure it out somehow; she will try to take your position, slipping between the criminals. Do you know how to play chess?
- Not really.
- OK then. Imagine this as a throne, these chairs you are sitting on top of. OK. No one can remove you from this throne being my girlfriend, no one can stand between us. No one can take the club away from us. They have no chance. Understand?
- Yesss.
- As long as you stick with me, she cannot do anything; no one can mess with us. Do you understand?
- Yes. Everyone in the world would try to take your place, being my girlfriend, and they will try to push you out from this position, which only me I can give you, with Love. They will tell you lies about me and about themselves who’s club is it. Do you understand?
- Yes. But why?
- Because Rachel and Tom, the other two founding members of the club, Golan, I signed up with, are Adam's puppets. I don't trust any one of them. If they kill me, they never have to pay me what they owe me already, plus they can keep the 33% of the club which belongs to me. 100% Adam would keep. Do you understand now?
- Yessss.
- We will pull all the trash out and remodel the place without any permit, under the rug, in secret.
- I sssseeee. (Eye. See.)”
― Tomas Adam Nyapi, BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA