Scientology Quotes

Now, the basics in Scientology can be explained to a little kid and (snap) he’ll get them right away, if they’re true. The truths, the valuable truths, and the things that are really going forward in Scientology are that easily communicated. And you can always tell when we’re just a little bit off the rails because a little kid can’t understand what we’re talking about. And if that’s the case and it’s gotten very complicated, we may be on the verge of a simplicity but we haven’t quite reached it because we haven’t achieved understanding.

You might say all things worth understanding are infinitely simple. And all things which are very, very difficult to understand aren’t worth studying.

You take somebody who considers things in a very serious light. This person will take responsibility, but he won’t execute it. In other words, his level of taking hold of responsibility, his ability to handle responsibility, is very poor, even when he says he’s a very ‘responsible’ fellow. You see, he considers it too serious. …

Most anybody who’s getting anything done really knows that it’s not blood, it’s a game. And as long as they know it’s a game … You ever see a college football team down there? They start hitting the line, they get broken legs and they grit their teeth and they’re in there to do and die for dear old—their employers—but it’s a game and that’s important. As long as life has the level of being a game, you can play it. But when it no longer has the level of being a game, it plays you.

Well, if you’re going to live a life without sensation, feeling, communication, ARC, understanding and a few other minor quantities, why live? … because the things I’ve named are the pay you get for living; and there’s no other pay.

The pay is communication, sensation, ARC, understanding, cooperative endeavor, enthusiasm over goals, activity; the feeling one is going someplace and doing something. These are the only payments that can be made to anyone for living. There are some things that try and substitute for them: mink coats, Cadillacs, and big bank accounts. Person says, ‘Well, if I could just make a couple of million, then I would’ve been paid for it.’ Well, you and I know the answer to that. We see some of these fellows that slaved through it for 20-25-30 years, let everything go by the boards but that first couple million, or something like that, and there they sit in the preclear’s chair with ulcers. They were paid, apparently; they were apparently paid; paid in cash—but they weren’t paid in communication, sensation, understanding, feeling of a job well done, ARC. These payments they didn’t get, and it made them sick! So there is something real about living, and that something real is life. Not MEST, although MEST is a good substitute for reality.

Now, the funny part of it is, that if you can get paid in the commodities which I have just mentioned, you usually get paid in cash, too; and there’s certainly nothing wrong in having a few hogsheads full of cash.

Courage could be summed up in: one, being willing to cause something; and two, going ahead to achieve the effect one has postulated against any and all odds. There doesn’t happen to be any such thing as failure. There just doesn’t happen to be any such thing.

But of course, you all want to agree there’s such a thing as failure so that you can have a reason to fail so you won’t have to be cause. That’s another thing. But there isn’t any reason to fail. There’s no excuse for any failure that ever occurred anyplace in history, except this—except this: There was just not quite enough carry-through and push-through.

There is only one way, really, to get into a state of living, and that’s live! There is no substitute for an all-out, over-the-ramparts, howling charge against life. That’s living. Living does not consist of sitting in a temple in the shadows and getting rheumatism from the cold stones. Living is hot, it’s fast, it’s often brutal! It has a terrific gamut of emotional reactions.

If you are really willing to live, you first have to be willing to do anything that consists of living. Weird. But it’s one of those awfully true things that you wonder why one has to say it. And yet it has to be said.

Now, why did you arrive in the condition you are in? This is all this leads up to. It wasn’t actually that—of anything specific that you did. Yes, you have overts; yes, these overts combined into certain motivators being more forceful upon you than otherwise. But even if you hadn’t had overts you still would have gotten the motivators. You would have dreamed up something as an overt, don’t you see?

The oddity here is simply that if all this has happened to you and you’ve been punished, then you must have had—been punished for some reason. So, you’re still trying to be reasonable and intelligent about it and this doesn’t happen to be true at all. The only reasons you were ever punished was for being you, for being powerful and for not being quite intelligent enough.

The exact crimes were to be there and to communicate. Those were the two crimes.

There’s nothing wrong with the first dynamic, if you’ve got seven others in good action. There’s nothing wrong with being the most important person under the sun, if everybody else is just as important as you are. You got that real good?

The only thing that you ever object to in important people is—because they act so thoroughly, too many times, on the supposition that everybody else is a crumb.

You are important. But you’re as important as seven dynamics are important—to you.

Now, where, wherever—wherever man—wherever man finds himself deeply instilled and engrossed and surrounded with mystery, he is actually in conflict with himself, and himself alone. That is why processing works.

The only aberration is denial of self.

Nobody else can do anything to you but you. That’s a horrible state of affairs. You can do something to you, but it requires your postulate, your agreement or your disagreement before anything could happen to you.

And a man is as sick as he will not act. That makes sense to you, doesn’t it? He’s as sick as he won’t act, and he’s as mediumly sick as he’ll think about it.

His feeling about action should be such that his computation is taken for granted and the action is sure, competent and certain. He says to himself, ‘Act!’ and he acts. And he acts with good sense, with a good estimation of effort, with good placement of his force and so on. He acts.

I would say this: The only reprehensible thing—it is not reprehensible to have ARC breaks, it’s not reprehensible to miss somebody’s goals and get so restimulated, to do this, to do that, something or other, have ARC breaks… The only thing reprehensible is not doing that, but when you have done it—picking yourself up by the scruff of the neck, sooner or later, in that period, and putting yourself back on the rails again, knowing that you can rise superior to it and surmount it. See. That’s the only thing that’s reprehensible, it’s not doing that sooner or later, you see.

Blow, explode and break up all the furniture, see, that’s all very well, but if in a week or so, at the absolute outside, you haven’t gotten yourself by the scruff of the neck, just realize you’re not rising superior to your bank. And the only thing that got us where we are is just rising superior. Without even any thetan bootstraps to grab hold of, see. It’s quite important to know that.