Cult Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old cult quotes, cult sayings, and cult proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

The cult of personality is the curse of modern communication. Why should we believe that the actor, the entertainer or the sportsperson, the well-born, rich (whether by talent or accident,) or just famous for being famous, have anything original, wise, or philosophical to say? Yet, smitten by celebrity, we hang upon their lips. Anita Robinson
Even small cults are a serious cost on the world economy, to victims, their families, employers, friends, and credit-card companies. Keith Henson
The new cult... unimportant and opinionated young men who fancy that they can invert Nature and the human passions.... The love of a man for a woman, of woman for man, is the axis whereon the universe revolves. Cyril M. Drew
A cult is a religion with no political power. Tom Wolfe
One person's religion is another person's cult. Philip Seymour Hoffman
The difference between a cult and an established religion is sometimes about one generation. Scott McLemee
What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority. Robert Altman
Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery. Helen Dendy Bosanquet
The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal. Pope Francis
The modern spirit is a hesitant one. Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants. Roger Lowenstein
Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there. Max Lerner
Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence.... It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. Okakura Kakuzō
Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself. Marguerite Yourcenar
The cult of happiness turns into a huge concern which to my opinion is exactly contrary to what happiness should be: a paradise of enchantment. Pascal Bruckner
The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. Ayn Rand
A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them. Philip Zimbardo
If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult. Steve Almond
The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God. Thomas Merton
All culture must have arisen from cult. Alan Moore
Religious cult: The church down the street from yours. Johnny Hart
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
The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
When a cult grows up, it becomes a culture. Jan Shipps
A cult following is a nice way of saying very few people like you. Martin Mull
Cult leaders succeed in dominating their followers because they have mastered the cruel art of exploiting universal human dependency and attachment needs in others. Daniel Shaw
The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own. Frank Zappa
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. Philip Zimbardo
Worship is the community's cult in its purest, most inward, most subjective form--a cult in which objectivity is, as it were, consumed and digested, while the objective content, now stripped of its objectivity, has become a possession of mind and feeling. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. Robert A. Heinlein
The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it. Gustave Flaubert
Cult: simply an extension of the idea that everyone's supreme aim in life is self- fulfillment and happiness and that one is entitled to wreck marriage, children and certainly one's health and sanity in pursuit of this. Stephen Spender
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. Patriotism is its cult. Erich Fromm
But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow. Robert Hughes
When a Guru points His finger towards the truth, His disciples try to look at the truth. But His crazy fans remain fixed to the finger and say, 'How glorious is this finger! How glorious must be the truth this glorious finger is pointing towards! I will look at the truth one day but right now let me sing glories of this finger. Shunya
Cults are very good at finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there. Jonathan Sims
People in a cult don't know they're in a cult. But everyone else can tell. Oliver Markus Malloy
We are given to the cult of personality; when things go badly we look to some messiah to save us. If by chance we think we have found one, it will not be long before we destroy him. Konstantinos Karamanlis
Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now. Keith Henson
The best method for preventing destructive cult involvement is preventative education. If students and the public at large are more aware of destructive groups beforehand they may better understand and resist their recruitment efforts. Rick Ross
Today in the west the word 'guru' has come to mean someone who leads a cult, someone who deprives others of their intellectual or spiritual freedom and rips them off financially. Frederick Lenz
Whatever term you wish to use—mind control, thought reform, brainwashing—it is ultimately a process that disrupts an individual's ability to make independent decisions from within their own identity. Steven Hassan
Most religions begin as cults, as Christianity was considered a cult in first-century Rome. It took a few centuries and a superstitious leader in Constantine for it to become the state religion. Cults just need to exhibit a little more of that virtuous patience. Jack Bowen
To understand ungovernability, imagine a cult with a dictatorial leader. He takes his followers' money, tells them how to behave and frequently uses corporal punishment to keep them in line. Allen Thornton
In some cases cults manipulate people into breaking contact with their family and these people become slaves of the cult. In some tragic cases, cults have committed mass suicide. Karl Ericson
So many sick things have happened. These poisoners - they feel they have no way out, feel they are in a cul de sac. I am a fiction maker, Shoko Asahara [Aum's leader] is, too. If making a story is white magic, what Asahara did was black magic. But sometimes black magic attracts people. It is very strong. Haruki Murakami
New self-improvement courses, or cults, or religions - take your pick - tend to be composed of a mixture of common sense, moral guidance, and lunacy. Emily Yoffe
Other dogs look at French Poodles and wonder if they are members of some strange religious cult. Rita Rudner
I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it. Rachel Cusk
A cult is hardcore - evil and good are the same and subjected only to perspective, and you must tell the difference by experience, not books. Do good through evil, and justify evil to get good. Robin Sacredfire
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. Stephen Colbert
The cult of self has become an addiction—feeding off the ego of self-glorification. The word cult encompasses many movements and ideas, but simply put, it describes a culture of alternative beliefs, fads, and trends, and tampers with just enough truth to knock many off balance. Billy Graham
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov
Killer cults do exist, and they all have one thing in common: invariably, they're headed by charismatic megalomaniacs. Elle Greenaway
Cult? Why is it that any belief system that strays from the norm is labeled a cult? That any leader that dares to speak a deeper truth is called a lunatic with a messiah complex, and his followers are just pawns. Nina Van Horn
The cult of evil meets / In the very dead of night, / Planning, plotting, scheming / To do things never right. / They want to rule the world / From their private hidey-hole, / They never show their faces / And evil is their only goal. Phil Roberts
Looks like you've joined a cult / Don't you think that you should have / Consulted me / Before setting a course of misery / As zeal inside you grows / Say goodbye to all that you know / About your life / As you're filleted with a spoken knife. Brian Miller; Jaclyn Barker; Kirk Graff; Kyla Dupuis