Lawrence Wright Quotes

If I get ‘em by the short and curlies, the hearts and minds will follow.

There's a lot of things that are good in Scientology, because I wouldn't have been in it. And that's the thing: a lot of people trivialize this thing, like, 'Oh, it's Xenu, and it's a volcano, and it's jumping on couches and acting crazy.' These people are victims. We've been victimized. We believed in something because it starts out very normal.

The thoughts he put in her head. Someone should’ve arrested him for it.

When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.

Religion is just mind control.

They had taken me to an exhibit called 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death' on Hollywood Boulevard, where a Scientologist told me psychiatrists set up the Holocaust. I feared I was being brain-washed. And then I lost it - big time.

Scientology delivers what it promises under the guise of tearing away falsity, neuroses, psychoses. It creates a brainwashed, robotic version of you. It's a 'Matrix' of you, so you're communicating with people all the time using Scientology.

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.

There was always pressure to make a Scientologist out of the people you were working with.

The Way teaches that people outside the cult are evil - of the Devil. In line with that belief, the members tried to alienate me from my family, to whom I am very close, and from my friends. So I just drifted away. In seeing my three-month involvement as 'just a phase,' my parents were lucky rather than wise.

I think if you're going to abuse someone, you really have to convince them of two things. First, you have to normalise what you're doing, convince them that it's not that bad. And the second thing is to convince them that they deserve it in some way.

Put your trust in the Lord....your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.

Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.

I'm not trying to twist people's heads around. I'm not trying to say, "Believe in me."

I don't need handcuffs to enslave a woman.

Motherfucker. She leaves me no choice. Now I have to break her self-esteem, sleep with her and steal the shirt.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

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.

I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Unbelievable," I said. "First you wanted to hide her away to keep you alive. Now you actually want her out in the world to use her compulsion for your own psycho plans.

Most fatal, most hateful of all things is bullying.... Sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. What is more dangerous is ideal bullying. Bullying people into what is ideally good for them.

The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person's sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy.

Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

Screw the truth into men's minds.