Cult Dynamics Quotes

You hear stories about Scientology, where people are prevented from leaving, and Westboro's not like that. If you decide that you don't want to be there, then they will help you leave. The shunning, cutting people off - they're doing that because they believe it is for our highest good.

In a cult intervention information is presented about the group that the member is most often not aware of.

I’ve been involved in a number of cults both as a leader and a follower. You have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader.

I think I could create a cult, no problem. The hard part is getting people to kill themselves.

Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.

One of the things that can be helpful in terms of an explanation is to look at the ways in which cults are similar to abusive relationships. Nobody seeks out an abusive partner, but so many people stay in these relationships longer than they should - they make excuses, they ignore red flags, and they allow themselves to be emotionally manipulated.

Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God's chosen.

I'm not like recruiting people and starting a cult and telling people to be fat.

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

The quickest way to detect a cult is to sniff for doublethink. The cult seeks control over its membership not by providing a coherent theological system but by providing the opposite: an unstable theology infinitely malleable to the needs of the cult's top echelon and uninterpretable at all times to anyone below that level.

He bends over to untie his shoes. “So, have you been ostracized from your little crowd of devotees?” “No,” I say automatically. Then I add, “Maybe. But they aren’t my devotees.” “Please. They’re like the Cult of Four.” I can’t help but laugh. “Jealous? Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to call your very own?

This may sound insulting to some of my cult studies friends, but there's a lot of cult studies people who ignore, shall we say, the wider canvas - because they simply don't know about its existence or they don't know how it operates.

It might seem perverse for honestly religious people to group their faiths with those of the sadists and megalomaniacs who run most cults, but a growing number are doing just that.