Jeff Guinn > Quotes

“Not all magic is fireworks and fanfare. Sometimes magic is quiet and sneaks up on you. An illusion is what needs all the bells and whistles to make itself appear grander than it really is, which is just a trick that can be explained.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Autobiography of Santa Claus

“Have you noticed it's always unhappy people who attack the things happy people believe in?”
― Jeff Guinn, The Christmas Chronicles

“He felt that anything he wanted ought to be his no matter what.”
― Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

“If anything was certain, it was that there would always be people looking for someone to tell them what to believe in and what to do.”
― Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

“No one listening [to Jones' sermons], even those who were the most devoted to him, could take it all in. But at some point each follower heard something that reaffirmed his or her personal reason for belonging to Peoples Temple, and for believing in Jim Jones. As Jonestown historian Fielding McGehee observes, "What you thought Jim said depended on who you were.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“In years to come, Jim Jones would frequently be compared to murderous demagogues such as Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. These comparisons completely misinterpret, and historically misrepresent, the initial appeal of Jim Jones to members of Peoples Temple. Jones attracted followers by appealing to their better instincts. The purpose of Peoples Temple was to offer such a compelling example of living in racial and economic equality that everyone else would be won over and want to live the same way.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Let me assure you doubters―there really is a Santa Claus. I learned from working on this book that you don't need to go to the North Pole to find him. It's only necessary to look into your own heart.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Autobiography of Santa Claus

“It was ironic—the great socialists could only survive by becoming capitalists.” But”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Jim Jones was a dedicated Esquire reader, and for him its January 1962 issue (which reached newsstands in December 1961) could not have been timelier. One lead story, touted on the cover, was titled “9 Places in the World to Hide,” the cities and/or regions where inhabitants had the best odds of survival following nuclear war. Reporter Caroline Bird”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“In fact, in its most basic form, socialism was a belief in more equitable distribution of wealth, with everyone afforded the opportunity to thrive in accordance with personal achievement regardless of race or social position.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Jimmy’s two earliest and most enduring lessons from his mother were these: there was always some Them out to get you, and reality was whatever you believed.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“They were suffering from a diminished heart, a diminished soul.”
― Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

“A nation could choose to observe socialist tenets. Communism meant rigid government control—people had no choice other than to comply, and government mandate rather than personal accomplishment determined the course of their lives. Peoples Temple socialism was intended to change hearts through example, not coercion.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“The consensus was what they termed “Christian communism,” since they believed that “from each according to ability, to each according to need” was the proper church approach.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“the best-known and most direct of which was the Lincoln Highway, some 3,400 miles of road starting in New York City, wending its way through thirteen states, and ending in San Francisco. The highway was the brainchild of Indiana businessman Carl Fisher, who made his fortune selling automobile headlights.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

“Like his adversaries back in Wichita and Dodge, many hailed from Texas. But these weren’t drovers intent on a little wild fun. They dealt in cattle, too, but instead of herding them, they stole them. For that they acquired a generic nickname that eventually evolved into a complimentary description, but one that in 1880 was intended as a slur, a means of identifying men so low and violent that no evil act was considered beneath them: Cowboys.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West

“Jim Jones had wanted his grand gesture to make an impression on the entire world, and, to that extent, he succeeded. But the Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Manson liked to brag that prison was his daddy and the street was his mother.”
― Jeff Guinn, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

“Individual suicide was wasteful, but mass suicide that sent a message of defiance, and that encouraged future generations to fight oppression to the death, was admirable.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Henry Ford was always a man of strong opinions, and one who absolutely trusted his own instincts. He especially disdained anyone identified as an expert: ""If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means, I would endow the opposition with experts. No one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip

“One thing the army didn’t do very often was swoop in to deflect Indian attacks on wagon trains of settlers—there weren’t that many such assaults. Between 1842 and 1859, about thirty thousand Western emigrants died while en route by wagon train, but fewer than four hundred were killed by Indians. The wagon train death rate was 3 percent, compared to the 2.5 percent average among all Americans. Ninety percent of wagon train fatalities came from disease, with cholera the leading cause.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West

“Shaw resented being questioned by the Temple Planning Commission. It felt especially offensive because, besides her constant responsibilities as a foster parent, she had a day job as well, contributing her entire salary to the Temple.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Carter, like almost everyone else in the Temple who got to know Milk, grew to like him immensely: “Before him, all I knew about gays were that some of them were bears and others were queens. But Harvey became a friend of mine, and I went to his house and spent time with him and his partner and realized that a gay couple was just that, a couple. See, that was something good about the Temple—if you were part of it, you always had the opportunity to grow as a person, to be around and learn to accept, to appreciate, all different kinds of people.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“On Jones’s instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“conformity. They believed in and followed the same rules, respecting parents and teachers above all. This was typical throughout Indiana—according to state historian James H. Madison, “Moderation has been the Indiana way, a moderation firmly anchored in respect for tradition. Among the revolutions that have not occurred in Indiana is a generational revolt.” Lynn”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“It is a privilege to help children learn the true meaning of Christmas, which is gratitude to God for sending us his son Jesus, and gaining from that gratitude a sense of love and generosity of spirit toward others,”
― Jeff Guinn, The Great Santa Search

“Belief is frequently a matter of convenience rather than the result of objectively weighing evidence.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral--And How It Changed The American West

“Keep them poor and keep them tired, and they’ll never leave.” How well he understood his people.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

“Much of history results from apparently unrelated dominoes tumbling one over another.”
― Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West

“As Americans embraced Wild West mythology by ignoring inconvenient facts and exaggerating or inventing more palatable ones, they also altered the meaning of a traditionally negative term. In Wyatt’s real West, anyone referred to as a cowboy was most likely a criminal. But in movies the word was used first to describe hardworking ranch hands and then, generically, those who rode horses, toted six-guns, and, when necessary (and it always became necessary) fought to uphold justice at the risk of their own lives. Cowboys were heroes, and their enemies were outlaws. So far as his growing legion of fans was concerned, Wyatt Earp was a cowboy in the new, best sense of the word. B”
― Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West