Short Quotes on Scientology

[In 1949, L. Ron Hubbard] was invited to address a science-fiction group in Newark hosted by the writer, Sam Moskowitz. 'Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he told the meeting. 'If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.'
- Los Angeles Times, 27 August 1978

"Founded by L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology religion attempts to explain the origin of negative spiritual forces in the world and advances techniques for improving one's own spiritual well-being. Scientologists believe that most human problems can be traced to lingering spirits of an extraterrestrial people massacred by their ruler, Xenu, over 75 million years ago. These spirits attach themselves by "clusters" to individuals in the contemporary world, causing spiritual harm and negatively influencing the lives of their hosts."
- Judge Leonie Brinkema; US DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, Alexandria Division, Civil Action No 95-1107-A

"The parties dispute whether the segments excerpted by Lerma represent "the heart of" the Works under the qualitative component. The Court is unable to evaluate this component because many of the copyrighted materials are incomprehensible."
- Judge Leonie Brinkema; US DISTRICT COURT, EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, Alexandria Division, Civil Action No 95-1107-A

"Generally speaking, it is my contention that Hubbard did no credible research of his own. Instead he distilled ideas from books he had read, the few college courses he took, his own experiences, and his very fertile and disturbed mind, and came up with a mish-mash of bizarre theories which he wrote down in scientific-sounding phrases and words."
- Jeff Jacobsen in "The Hubbard is Bare"

[Dianetics is] "an oversimplified form of regular psychotherapy mixed with hypnosis."
- Russell Miller in "Bare Faced Messiah", Chapter 9

"In a 1909 lecture, Freud explained a method for uncovering traumatic memories. Patients were asked to recall earlier and earlier life incidents on a "chain" until the emotional "charge" was released. Hubbard not only took the technique, he even retained several of the expressions used by the translator of these lectures. Freud had abandoned the technique, because it was laborious and completely failed to uncover key repressions. In fact, after sometimes providing initial relief, Dianetics all too often deteriorates into the dangerous conviction that entirely imaginary incidents are literal truth."
- John Atack in "The Total Freedom Trap"

"Hubbard redefined the existing term "engram" as a label for traumatic incidents where the individual has lost consciousness. Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health proclaims that by "erasing" the engrams, the individual is freed from compulsions, obsessions, neuroses, and such conditions as heart trouble, poor eyesight, asthma, colour blindness, allergies, stuttering, poor hearing, sinusitis, high blood pressure, dermatitis, migraine, ulcers, arthritis, morning sickness, the common cold, conjunctivitis, alcoholism and tuberculosis. Hubbard soon claimed cures for cancer and leukaemia. No scientific evidence for these claims has ever been produced."
- John Atack in "The Total Freedom Trap"

[On Thursday 10 August, 1950] "Hubbard stepped up to the microphone to introduce the 'world's first clear'. She was, he said, a young woman by the name of Sonya Bianca, a physics major and pianist from Boston. Among her many newly acquired attributes, he claimed she had 'full and perfect recall of every moment of her life' [...] As people began getting up and walking out of the auditorium, one man noticed that Hubbard had momentarily turned his back on the girl and shouted, 'OK, what colour necktie is Mr Hubbard wearing?' The world's first 'clear' screwed up her face in a frantic effort to remember, stared into the hostile blackness of the auditorium, then hung her head in misery".
- Russell Miller in "Bare Faced Messiah", Chapter 10.

" Hubbard became ever more authoritarian and suspicious of the people around him. 'He was having a lot of political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power,' said Barbara Kaye [not her real name], a public relations assistant at the Los Angeles Foundation. 'He didn't trust anyone and was highly paranoid. He thought the CIA had hit men after him. We'd be walking along the street and I would ask, "Why are you walking so fast?" He would look over his shoulder and say, "You don't know what it's like to be a target." No one was after him: it was all delusion.'"
- Russell Miller in "Bare Faced Messiah", Chapter 10.

'People had breakdowns quite often,' said Perry Chapdelaine, a Sears Roebuck clerk from Mason City, Iowa, who was a student at Elizabeth. 'It was always hushed up before anyone found out about it. It happened to a guy on my course, a chemical engineer. They wanted to get him out of the school and I volunteered to stay with him in an adjoining building. He never slept or ate and was in a terrible state, no one could do anything with him and in the end they took him off to an asylum.'
- Russell Miller from an interview with Perry Chapdelaine, Nashville, 25 April 1986

"... by 1951, Hubbard was well known to the FBI. The opinion of the agent who had interviewed him in Newark that he was a 'mental case' figured prominently in his file, as did Sara's divorce allegations that he was 'hopelessly insane'. It was a diagnosis with which the FBI was inclined to concur ..." - Russell Miller in "Bare Faced Messiah", Chapter 11.

"We've got some new ways to make slaves here."
-L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course lecture 20, 1952.

"With Scientology, Hubbard asserted that we are all spiritual beings ("thetabeings", and later "thetans"), who have lived for trillions of years, incamating again and again. He claimed that through the use of his new techniques, anyone could achieve supernatural powers. In 40 years, no scientific evidence has been provided for these claims."
- John Atack in "The Total Freedom Trap"

"It was only in the late 1960s, with increasing criticism of its methods by western governments, that Scientology retreated behind the trappings of religion. Scientology "ministers" take a course in comparative religion based upon a single book, and read the few ceremonies written by Hubbard. Their training takes a few days. They dress in imitation of Christian ministers, including a dog collar and a Christian-seeming cross. In fact, the cross is a Scientology cross, which clearly imitates that of Hubbard's role model, magician Aleister Crowley. It is actually a satanic "crossed out" cross."
- John Atack in "The Total Freedom Trap"