Quotes from Steven Hassan

A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth," the infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels memorably claimed.

Psychotherapy/educational cults, which have enjoyed great popularity, purport to give the participant "insight" and "enlightenment." Commercial cults play on people's desires to make money. They typically promise riches but actually enslave people, and compel them to turn money over to the group. None of these destructive cults deliver what they promise and glittering dreams eventually turn out to be paths to psychological enslavement.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. —Daniel

In my opinion, phobia indoctrination is the single most powerful technique for keeping people dependent and obedient. I have encountered numerous individuals who had long ago stopped believing in the leader and the doctrine, but were unable to walk away. They were psychologically paralyzed with indoctrinated fears which often functioned subconsciously.

The Republican party is almost like a religious cult surrounding an organized crime family.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. —Daniel Patrick Moynihan

A person's right to believe, however, does not grant them an automatic license to act indiscriminately on those beliefs.

As New York Times columnist Charles Blow observed, "Trump's magical mixture is to make being afraid feel like fun. His rallies are a hybrid of concert revelry and combat prep. Trump tells his followers about all the things of which they should be afraid, or shouldn't trust or should hate, and then positions himself as the greatest defense against those things. His supporters roar their approval at their white knight.

Members are indoctrinated to believe that the Training Routines will help them be more effective in their lives—earn more money, be better communicators, get better jobs. Later they are told that by performing these routines they will help clear the planet of poverty, crime, disease—indeed, of all of humanity's problems. At the highest level, members are told that they can control matter, energy, space, and time. The truth is, they are the ones being controlled.

News items are excellent for eliciting fear and inculcating phobias. Cult leaders like to tell members about floods, earthquakes, fires, famines, plagues, and wars–as proof that the last days have arrived.

Faith can be a wonderful thing if it is balanced by critical thinking.

Being able to slowly and objectively size up a situation is crucial. We observe. We take a curious, yet concerned, attitude. We gather information in a relaxed, thoughtful manner, but we do not rush in to fix the problem. Using the information we've gathered, we determine what action to take.

If the member's cult identity seems healthy, it could be co-opting the talents and skills of the authentic self. The result is that, to the untrained eye, cult members can appear completely normal. Asking questions that test a person's thoughts and free will is the only way to evaluate the extent of destructive influence.

At a 1937 conference of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, Stalin's people applauded him for eleven consecutive minutes, fearing that the first to stop would be killed or sent to prison. Finally, one man stopped, the director of a paper factory. "To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down," writes Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. That same night the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years.

Truth is stronger than lies, and love is stronger than fear.

The more independent a person is, financially and physically, the less controlled he is by the cult.

Create an atmosphere in your classroom that encourages questioning, open discussion and respect for a wide range of beliefs and opinions.

the process of controlling people by mentally hijacking their rational thought processes.

We don't like feeling that events are out of control, so we put reality into an order that makes sense to us.

the remarkable power of behavior modification techniques, group conformity and obedience to authority. These three factors are known in psychological terms as "influence processes" and demonstrate that situations often determine human behaviors, often more than the values and beliefs of the individual.

13. The more distorted our sense of reality, the more certain we will be that what we believe is accurate. 14. The more insistent a person is about the accuracy of his or her observations, the more likely it is that his or her sense of reality is distorted.

all groups are not evil. In fact, the good part of being involved with a healthy group—be it a religious, social or political—is that you can exercise control over your participation. You do not have to stay one minute longer than you want. Nor do you have to sit silently and blame yourself, if you don't understand what is being said or done. You can question, and you can question some more. Not only is this all right, it is your Constitutional right.

People like to think they are rational and in control, but the lessons of history and social psychology demonstrate, time and again, that simply isn't so. We go about our days, and our lives, using unconscious mental models. When cult leaders manipulate those models, in subtle and overt ways, we can be persuaded to believe and do things we might never have considered without such systematic psychological influence.

There are always two or more sides to an issue, so don't accept any information at face value. Instead, be willing to hear all sides of the story. Take the time to explore both pro and counter–cult sites. Then you can develop your own, informed opinions.