Tokyo, Japan, March 20th 1995: members of the Doomsday Cult Aum Shinrikyo or The Supreme Truth Sect placed packages filled with a deadly serin nerve agent on five different trains all racing into the heart of the Tokyo underground. ibid.
Why is Moses always pictured with horns? Because Moses was the leader of a lunar cult. The moon worshippers. Jordan Maxwell, lecture Project Camelot Conference September 2009
At heart Christianity is a personality cult. Its core is the unprecedented idea that god became human not in a Pharaoh, a King or even an Emperor but in a humble peasant from Galilee. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
God, Ted, I heard about those cults – everyone dressing in black and saying Our Lord’s going to come back and judge us all. Father Ted s2e4: Old Grey Whistle Theft, Dougal, Channel 4 1996
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect. John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion
The Great Oz has spoken. Wizard of Oz 1939 starring Judy Garland & Frank Morgan & Ray Bolger & Bert Lahr & Billie Burke & Margaret Hamilton et al, director Victor Fleming
The Recrudescence of Puritanism. Bertrand Russell, essay 1928
It’s easy to tell the difference – a cult is someone else’s religion. Jim Heldberg
What’s a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority. Robert Altman, Guardian 11th April 1981
The first mark of a cult that is ever true is extra Biblical revelation – they pay lip service to the Bible. Dr David Breese, author Know the Marks of Cults
A cult is a religion with no political power. Tom Wolfe
Being a rock star is like being a cult leader – you really have to be in your own religion. Courtney Love
I can’t really say how big the cult is. But I’m proud of it. I’m proud that it has a life. Bob Odenkirk
I like being infamous. I think it is safe being in a cult. Adam Ant
The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own. Frank Zappa
The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force. Jean Jacques Rousseau
And it needs to have three characteristics to call it a cult: one is that a guru becomes worshipped rather than the broader religious principles ... Has thought-reform-like characteristics, that is systematic indoctrination with a great focus on confession, criticism, self-criticism, in a systematic way ... Heavy exploitation usually from above ... Every indication is that we can expect a lot more cultish violence. Professor Robert Lifton, Harvard University
Thought reform is a systematic effort which has two stages: one is the breakdown stage with heavy confession and a breakdown of one’s own psychic integrity, and then there’s the second stage which is re-education – trying to re-make a person into a new person. Professor Robert Lifton
Destructive cults are distinguished by their use of deception and mind control techniques to undermine a person’s free will and make him dependent on the group’s leader ... A group becomes destructive when its leader actively uses such power to deceive members and to rob them of their individuality and free will. Steven Hassan, Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves pp3-4
Mind control seeks nothing less than to disrupt an individual’s authentic identity ... Cult mind control is a social process that encourages obedience, dependence, and conformity. It discourages autonomy and individuality by immersing recruits in an environment that represses free choice. The group’s dogma becomes the person’s only concern. Anything or anyone that does not fit into his reshaped reality is irrelevant. ibid. p38
I do believe that in some of the more extreme cults there are similar characteristics with people who have been zombies. Steve Hassan
Part of the definition of a destructive cult is that they are using mind control on people. Steve Hassan
People under the influence of cults are similar to that we observe in addicts. Typical behaviour for both includes draining bank accounts, neglecting children, destroying relations with family, and losing interest in anything except the drug or cult. Keith Henson
Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses. Keith Henson
Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. Keith Henson
A cult is a group or movement that, to a significant degree (a) exhibits great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing; (b) uses a thought-reform program to persuade, control, and socialize members (i.e. to integrate them into the group’s unique pattern of relationships, beliefs, values and practices); c) systematically induces states of psychological dependency in members; (d) exploits members to advance the leadership’s goals; and (e) causes psychological harm to members, their families, and the community. Singer and Ofshe, Recovery from Cults p5
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following ‘by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole’. Of all the cults and philosophies that competed in the Greco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting. Mary Douglas
Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all. Nikita Khrushchev
Persecution produced its natural effect on them [Puritans and Calvinists]. It found them a sect; it makes them a faction. Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England
The Teresa cult is now a missionary multinational with an annual turnover in the tens of millions. It concentrated in Calcutta, that could certainly support a large hospital and perhaps even make a noticeable difference. But Mother Teresa has chosen instead to spread her franchise very thinly – to her the convent and the catechism matter more than the clinic ... She lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters which is hardly the essence of simplicity. And she preaches surrender and frustration to the poor ... She takes on the grim and tedious tones of the zealot and the fanatic. Christopher Hitchens, Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa
People who do this, men who do this, I know of no treatment ... Given that it’s personality disorder: very difficult to treat. Dr David Wolfe, psychologist
Cult leaders think they are gods: a delusion they share with their followers. Killer Cults: The Men Who Would Be Gods, 2019
When a person is put on a pedestal by the people he lives with on a daily basis, that is when the Guru is constantly deified by his followers; after a while it becomes impossible to differentiate between what’s real and what’s imaginary. Jean-Marie Abgrall, psychiatrist & criminologist & cult specialist
The sect will bombard them with we love you, you are beautiful, you are misunderstood, but we know you have inner worth. Jean-Marie Abgrall
No-one joins a cult. People join a religious group. People join a political group. People join a self-help group. Professor Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University