Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard on Twitter

Here is a Twitterer to follow: http://twitter.com/lrhquotes

Regular quotes from L. Ron Hubbard.

What is Greatness?

One of my favorite quotes from L. Ron Hubbard is the short article "What is Greatness?".

It starts out with:

The hardest task one can have is to continue
to love his fellows despite all reasons he
should not. And the true sign of sanity and
greatness is to so continue. For the one who
can achieve this, there is abundant hope.
For those who cannot, there is only sorrow,
hatred and despair. And these are not the
things of which greatness or sanity or
happiness are made.

It is indeed the hardest task. When those you trusted have betrayed you. When those you counted as friends are dragging your good name through the mud. At times like that it becomes very hard to still love your fellow man, but it can be done.

Here is the full quote: What is Greatness?

Humorous Quote

You may know how poor psychiatrists are at predicting behavior. They have a long history of predicting someone is not dangerous, only to have him go out shortly afterward and commit murder. (John Hinkley is one example. Also see: Eroding Justice: Psychiatry's Corruption of Law)

In fact, predicting human behavior is relatively easy. Just read the book Science of Survival and you'll know an infinite amount more than any psych.

Which brings me to this quote from L. Ron Hubbard:

We expect the fundamentals of behavior
to be complicated simply because
so many highly complicated people
have discussed the subject

How very true!

Ability Reduction

It's impossible to reduce an ability.
About the only thing you can do is reduce its exercise
or the willingness to exercise it.
-L. Ron Hubbard from the lecture "Control"

An obvious example is an athlete who gets injured. He still has the ability but he can no longer exercise it.

Next is reduction of the willingness to exercise the ability. Let's look at an actor like Silvester Stallone. Nominated for two Oscars and a WGA award in 1977 and a BAFTA award in 1978. Clearly the guy has the ability. Then he picked some not-so-good movies to appear in and then the press and the creeps at the "Razzie" awards started to target him and next thing you know he is a "star" because of his past record and not because of his current films. Recently, probably because he was out of the spotlight, the attacks decreased and he made a bit of a comeback, gaining some critical acknowledgment for the movie "Rocky Balboa", which he wrote, directed and starred in.

So, how can you apply this to your life? Where are you not exercising an ability as much as you should? Is it caused by an unwillingness to exercise the ability? Is it caused by something else? Injury, illness, drug abuse? Narrow it down by examining the ability and what may be stopping you from exercising it. Once you've figured it out then you can figure out possible solutions that will help you to exercise it more.

Tell me how it goes.

Your Potentialities

Your potentialities
are a great deal better
than anyone ever permitted
you to believe
-L. Ron Hubbard from Self Analysis

This is one of my favorite quotes. The truth is that we are far more capable than we know.

Often we are told quite the opposite: Did you ever have a teacher who told you that you were stupid? Did you ever have a "friend" who would make "jokes" at your every mistake? Did you ever see an ad that told you there was something wrong with you and that you needed the latest money making drug to enable you to live with it?

All around there are attempts to tell us that we are incapable and that we need someone or something in order to survive.

Well, the truth is in the quote above. Start believing in yourself. A potentiality is an ability that may be developed, so even though you may not see your abilities right now, they are there and you can develop them.

Don't listen to the naysayers. You have great potential abilities and there are many ways to develop them. Education is a real good one. The one I recommend is Scientology, because it has worked so well for me.

Control of the Environment

Every extinct species became extinct
because it could not change
to control a new environment
- L. Ron Hubbard from Self Analysis

This quote touches on the same subject as yesterday's: Control. Control is the ability to start, change and stop things at one’s own choice.

Some people think that to survive one must adapt to one's environment. The trouble with that idea is that it tends to have the connotation that one must adapt to avoid the dangers. It's a sort of "I can run away" definition. The quote above, from L. Ron Hubbard, says that you must change so you can control your environment, a very different idea.

The quote above can also be applied to entities other than species. Look at Circuit City for example. The environment (economy) changed and Circuit City was not able to change so that it could control the new situation and so it perished.

You can also apply it to your own life. Which areas are you having trouble in? How can you change to better control those areas? Change could be brought about by a decision to act differently, by education so you understand the area better or by a myriad of other ways that I will leave to your common sense.

Tell me what you find.

How well off is an individual?

An individual is as well off as he can change things in location in space - L. Ron Hubbard from the Phoenix Lectures.

Think about that one. If you cannot even move your body (i.e., change its location in space) then you are probably in a coma and not very well off. If you can move your body but not much else then you can't hold down a job, drive a car, or do any of the other things that are required to live in our society. If you can move your body and the other things in your environment that you need to move then you will be able to live in the world, drive a car, cook a meal, dance, play an instrument, etc., etc.

Look at your own life and see how this applies to the different areas of life you deal with. How well can you change the location of things for yourself? Your family? Your job? The groups you are involved with? Etc., etc.

I think you'll find out some interesting things about yourself and your life if you try that exercise.

Tell me what you find.

Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard (3)

People have value

and are important.
Big or small
they are important.


L. Ron Hubbard
from the article "Manners"
in the Scientology Handbook

Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard (2)

What has made all man a pauper in his happiness?

Transgressions against the mores of

his race,

his group,

his family!

-

L. Ron Hubbard

from the article "Clean Hands Make a Happy Life"

-

Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard (1)

Happiness and strength endure
only in the absence of hate.
To hate alone is the road to disaster.
To love is the road to strength.
To love in spite of all
is the secret to greatness.
And may very well be
the greatest secret
in this universe.

L. Ron Hubbard
from Scientology: A New Slant on Life

Scientology Books Site

Here's a new site I just found. It is a site of Scientology quotes and articles. Check it out. Here is one of the articles:

Communicating with others is a vital part of your life and if you have difficulty with it, you can feel "left out of life". What is it that keeps you from saying the things you want to say?

The Insanity of War

I just saw a rather controversial documentary about 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq. The documentary is called Fahrenheit 9/11, an alteration of the title of the book by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451. My guess is that the director of the movie, Michael Moore, probably wanted to draw parallels between the society depicted in the book and what has happened in our society since 9/11.

There has been great controversy over the movie with a great deal of political polarization. Unfortunately politics has become a spectator sport and if something is perceived to be critical of one side then all the supporters of that side defend their team to the last breath, no matter what.
So having said all that, I'm not going to pass any public judgement on the movie. Like every other source of information you should evaluate it carefully - not just blindly accept or reject it.

What I do want to say in this post is that back in 1950, in the book Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard said something about war that is 100% applicable today:

Wars never solve the need of wars. Fight to save the world for democracy or save it from Confucianism and the fight is inevitably lost by all. War has become associated in the past with competition, and it has been believed, therefore, by shifty logic, that wars were necessary. A society which advances into a war as a solution of its problems cannot but depress its own survival potential. No government was ever permitted to enter a war without costing its people some of their liberties. ... A democracy engaging in war has always lost some of its democratic rights. As it engages in more and more wars, it eventually comes under the command of a dictator. ... So went Greece, so went Rome. So goes England. So goes Russia. And so goes the United States and with it goes mankind.

Technology changes, times moves forward, perhaps societal attitudes change, but man basically is man and what was said over 50 years ago is just as applicable today. Mankind MUST stop engaging in war. When the Iraq war began it was heralded as a "conflict" that would be over soon and was being engaged upon to "save the world from WMDs." Back then it was obvious to those supporting the war that it would be a short war and we'd be out of Iraq in just a few months. Several years later we see that the reasons given for the war were ... how shall I put it? ... inaccurate and the idea that any war can be over in a few months is, to put it mildly, short sighted.

Before the war we were told that it was a solution to certain problems and now we are told we can't pull out because it would create even bigger problems. I think anyone who has studied history would have seen the inevitability of this mess from the start.

There is a solution to the insanity of war. It's a solution that will take a lot of work and effort, but I think any amount of effort is better than the millions of deaths that accompany a war.

As L. Ron Hubbard said:

Man is now faced with weapons so powerful that man himself may vanish from the Earth. There is no problem in the control of these weapons. They explode when and where man tells them to explode. The problem is in the control of man.
...
There is a higher goal, a better goal, a more glorious victory than gutted towns and radiation-burned dead. There is freedom and happiness and plenty and a whole universe to be won.

Dianetics has the tools to bring rationality to man. It is the answer to war. Learn about Dianetics and use it and let's make this world a better, saner place!

Happiness and Interest

I just heard a lecture by L. Ron Hubbard in which he is talking about happiness and interest:

The clue to happiness is being interested in life. And their happiness is as great as they create it. ... They'll get the amount of happiness that they can generate. But this happiness is not itself an emotion. It is a word which states a condition and the anatomy of that condition is interest.

This is a very practical piece of data. If you are feeling unhappy with your life then you need to create more interest in your life. Find a job you are more interested in. Take up a hobby that you are interested in. And don't forget that it is you who creates the interest, it doesn't just spring into being, it requires you to create it.

There are many tools provided in Scientology to help you create and maintain interest in life. The basic ones can be found here: Tools to Achieve Happiness