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Quote by Margot Adler

“We are not evil. We don't harm or seduce people. We are not dangerous. We are ordinary people like you. We have families, jobs, hopes, and dreams. We are not a cult. This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at T.V. We are real. We laugh, we cry. We are serious. We have a sense of humor. You don't have to be afraid of us. We don't want to convert you. And please don't try to convert us. Just give us the same right we give you--to live in peace. We are much more similar to you than you think.”

Author

Margot Adler

Margot Adler was an American author born on April 16, 1946, and passed away on July 28, 2014. Her works covered a range of subjects, including culture, society, and religion. Adler is known for her research on mysticism and religion, with her most famous book being 'Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Ritualists, and the New Religious Movements of the 1960s and 1970s'. Her writing style is accessible and has won her a wide readership. more

“It may have something to do with intelligence, but I am certain it has nothing to do with knowledge - I mean that there are people who have an instinctive yet perfect moral judgment, who can perform the most complex ethical calculations as Indian peasants can sometimes perform astounding mathematical feats in a matter of seconds. Lily was such a person. And I craved her approval.”

Knowledge Intelligence Ethical Approval Moral Judgment

Book:The Magus

Source: The Magus

“Impersonality is only reached by the practice of a form of attention which is rare in itself and impossible except in solitude; and not only physical but mental solitude. This is never achieved by a man who thinks of himself as a member of a collectivity, as part of something which says ‘We’. Men as parts of a collectivity are debarred from even the lower forms of the impersonal. A group of human beings cannot even add two and two. Working out a sum takes place in a mind temporarily oblivious of the existence of any other minds. Although the personal and the impersonal are opposed, there is a way from the one to the other. But there is no way from the collective to the impersonal. A collectivity must dissolve into separate persons before the impersonal can be reached. This is the only sense in which the person has more of the sacred than the collectivity. The collectivity is not only alien to the sacred, but it deludes us with a false imitation of it.”

Impersonal

Book:Letter to a Priest

Source: Letter to a Priest

“What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing everybody has: the body and its needs, its maladies, its manias - constipation, for instance, or menstruation. We ashamedly conceal these intimate matters not because they are so personal but because, on the contrary, they are so lamentably impersonal.”

Secrets Personal Impersonal

Book:Identity

Source: Identity