Religious Cults Quotes:

A cult is a religion with no political power.

- Tom Wolfe

source: In Our Time ch. 2 (1980) See Feibleman 1

topic: Religious, Philosophy, Power, Political Power, Daily Atheist

The difference between a cult and a religion is one outlasts its leader.

- Rakesh Khurana

topic: Differences, Leader, Cult, Religious Cults

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature--: and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.64, Cambridge University Press

topic: Religious, Reflection, Law, Religious Cults

When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.

- Daniel Bell

source: Daniel Bell (2008). “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.168, Basic Books

topic: Break Up, Breakup, Religious, Religious Cults

In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man, and the sorcerer is older than the priest.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1964). “Complete Works: The First Complete and Authorised English Translation”

topic: Religious, Men, Religion, Sorcery, Religious Cults

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?

- Rob Bell

topic: Christian, Religious, Jesus, Religious Cults, Virgin Birth

The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.

- Sean Durkin

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Religious, Prayer, Fall, Religious Cults

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.

- Rita Rudner

topic: Dog, Religious, Thinking, Spaniels, Inspirational Dog

There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education-a real sex education class-not just pictures and diaphragms and 'un-logical' terms and things like that.....there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not, there are classes on gym, physical education, let's learn volleyball.

- Tupac Shakur

topic: Volleyball, Religious, Sex, Police Brutality, Apartheid

Which is why I'd like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That's right, the Pope is coming to America this week and ladies, he's single!

- Bill Maher

source: "Bill Maher: Pope ‘Used to be a Nazi’; Compares Church to Cult, Bear Stearns". www.newsbusters.org. April 14, 2008.

topic: Religious, Children, Law, Coming To America, Religious Cults

Suicide terrorist groups are [not] religious cults isolated from the rest of their society, ... Rather, suicide terrorist organizations often command broad social support within the national communities from which they recruit, because they are seen as pursuing legitimate nationalist goals, especially liberation from foreign occupation.

- Robert Pape

topic: Suicide, Religious, Organization, Religious Cults, Terrorist Groups

Every new movement or group of people who seek to explore awareness is considered a cult. The United States was founded by several cults. They felt that Protestantism had become much too lax, so they came to America and set up a hard line religious cult.

- Frederick Lenz

topic: Religious, Buddhism, America, Lax, Religious Cults

A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.

- H. G. Wells

source: H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.10332, Delphi Classics

topic: Religious, Men, People, Esprit De Corps, Religious Cults

From Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a haze of changing colors. Actually, and in spite of all the healthful sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place - full of old, dying people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America - full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults and fake science, and wildcat enterprises, which, with their aim for quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of people.

- Louis Adamic

topic: Religious, Nice, Ocean, Wildcats, Changing Colors

Religious Cult: The church down the street from yours.

- Johnny Hart

topic: Religious, Fear, Atheism, Religious Cults

When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

- Zadie Smith

source: "This is how it feels to me" by Zadie Smith, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2001.

topic: Religious, Writing, Editors, Such Is Life, Religious Cults

If any other religious cult knew so few basic facts about its own seminal beliefs as the liberal cult does about Joe McCarthy, Janet Reno would gas them.

- Ann Coulter

source: Ann Coulter (2003). “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism”, p.80, Crown Forum

topic: Religious, Doe, Politics, Joe Mccarthy, Religious Cults