Quotes from Jeff Guinn

Not all magic is fireworks and fanfare. Sometimes magic is quiet and sneaks up on you. An illusion is what needs all the bells and whistles to make itself appear grander than it really is, which is just a trick that can be explained.

Have you noticed it's always unhappy people who attack the things happy people believe in?

He felt that anything he wanted ought to be his no matter what.

No one listening [to Jones' sermons], even those who were the most devoted to him, could take it all in. But at some point each follower heard something that reaffirmed his or her personal reason for belonging to Peoples Temple, and for believing in Jim Jones. As Jonestown historian Fielding McGehee observes, "What you thought Jim said depended on who you were.

If anything was certain, it was that there would always be people looking for someone to tell them what to believe in and what to do.

Let me assure you doubters?there really is a Santa Claus. I learned from working on this book that you don't need to go to the North Pole to find him. It's only necessary to look into your own heart.

Jim Jones was a dedicated Esquire reader, and for him its January 1962 issue (which reached newsstands in December 1961) could not have been timelier. One lead story, touted on the cover, was titled "9 Places in the World to Hide," the cities and/or regions where inhabitants had the best odds of survival following nuclear war. Reporter Caroline Bird

It was ironic—the great socialists could only survive by becoming capitalists." But

In fact, in its most basic form, socialism was a belief in more equitable distribution of wealth, with everyone afforded the opportunity to thrive in accordance with personal achievement regardless of race or social position.

They were suffering from a diminished heart, a diminished soul.

Jimmy's two earliest and most enduring lessons from his mother were these: there was always some Them out to get you, and reality was whatever you believed.

A nation could choose to observe socialist tenets. Communism meant rigid government control—people had no choice other than to comply, and government mandate rather than personal accomplishment determined the course of their lives. Peoples Temple socialism was intended to change hearts through example, not coercion.

Much of history results from apparently unrelated dominoes tumbling one over another.

Keep them poor and keep them tired, and they'll never leave." How well he understood his people.

the best-known and most direct of which was the Lincoln Highway, some 3,400 miles of road starting in New York City, wending its way through thirteen states, and ending in San Francisco. The highway was the brainchild of Indiana businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune selling automobile headlights.

Manson liked to brag that prison was his daddy and the street was his mother.

Shaw resented being questioned by the Temple Planning Commission. It felt especially offensive because, besides her constant responsibilities as a foster parent, she had a day job as well, contributing her entire salary to the Temple.

Belief is frequently a matter of convenience rather than the result of objectively weighing evidence.

Like his adversaries back in Wichita and Dodge, many hailed from Texas. But these weren't drovers intent on a little wild fun. They dealt in cattle, too, but instead of herding them, they stole them. For that they acquired a generic nickname that eventually evolved into a complimentary description, but one that in 1880 was intended as a slur, a means of identifying men so low and violent that no evil act was considered beneath them: Cowboys.

On Jones's instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.

Jim Jones had wanted his grand gesture to make an impression on the entire world, and, to that extent, he succeeded. But the Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility.

Individual suicide was wasteful, but mass suicide that sent a message of defiance, and that encouraged future generations to fight oppression to the death, was admirable.

The consensus was what they termed "Christian communism," since they believed that "from each according to ability, to each according to need" was the proper church approach.

conformity. They believed in and followed the same rules, respecting parents and teachers above all. This was typical throughout Indiana—according to state historian James H. Madison, "Moderation has been the Indiana way, a moderation firmly anchored in respect for tradition. Among the revolutions that have not occurred in Indiana is a generational revolt." Lynn