Jim Jones

Jim Jones (1977)

James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader, political activist, preacher, and faith healer who led the Peoples Temple, a new religious organization which existed between 1955 and 1978. In what he claimed to be a "revolutionary suicide", Jones and his inner circle orchestrated a mass murder–suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

Quotes

  • When God is Socialism, God is love. [...] Socialism means that all the means of production that man has [...] are owned by the same people, the family of man, the family of God. There is only one source of ownership—love. No one can privately own the land. No one can privately own the air. It must be held in common. So then, that is love, that is God, Socialism
    • Speaking to his followers, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 48, Chidester 1988, p. 57
  • I have seen by divine revelation the total annihilation of this country and many other parts of the world. San Francisco will be flattened. The only survivors will be those people who are hidden in the cave that I have been shown in a vision. Those who go into this cave with me will be saved from the poisonous radioactive fallout that will follow the nuclear bomb attack. [...] It will be up to our group to begin life anew on this continent. Then we will begin a truly ideal society just as you see it here in this room today. People will care about one another. Elderly people will be made to feel needed and will be allowed to be productive. People's needs will be met because they are loved, and not because they have money.This church family is an example of what society will eventually be like all over the world. There will at last be peace on earth. I have seen this all by divine revelation.
    • November 1969 sermon, quoted in Mills 1979, p. 122, Walliss 2004, p. 51
  • Our government does not love its people.
    • 1974 sermon, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 50
  • You've seen three people drop dead and you saw them resurrected. Their attitudes were prejudiced and they would drop dead, but I resurrected them. And I've done it sixty-three times in eleven months this year in a public meeting.
    • Speaking to his followers, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 49, Chidester 1988, p. 58
  • For twenty-four times this year people up to ninety-six years of age have fell down, and they've gived up the ghost, and no God came out of the sky. Old nigger Jones just walked down, and said, "Arise! Arise! Take up your bed! Arise!"
    • Speaking to his followers, quoted in Chidester 1988, p. 58
  • My whole life I have suffered from poverty and have faced many disappointments and pain, like a man is used to. That is why I want to make other people happy and want them to feel at home.
    • (1978). Translated back from Dutch to English, indirectly sourced, Messiahs: The vision and prophecies for the Second coming by John Hogue
  • The young preacher once threw his Bible to the floor and yelled at his associates, "Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!"
  • If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin.
    • "The Letter Killeth." Original material reprint. Department of Religious Studies. San Diego State
  • "Love is the only weapon." Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love! Kennedy died talking about something he couldn't even understand, some kind of generalized love, and he never even backed it up. He was shot down. Bullshit! "Love is the only weapon with which I've got to fight." I've got a hell of a lot of weapons to fight! I've got my claws. I've got cutlasses. I've got guns. I've got dynamite. I've got a hell of a lot to fight! I'll fight! I'll fight!
    • Mass meeting in Jonestown, featured in Father Cares (NPR documentary)
  • Son of a bitchin’ no good lousy ass anarchistic capitalist bitch. That's what I say about my relatives, but you won't say it.
    • "[1]" FBI No. Q265 (October 17, 1978)
  • I was ready to kill by the end of the third grade. I mean, I was so aggressive and hostile, I was ready to kill. Nobody gave me love, any understanding. In those days a parent was supposed to go with a child to school functions. There was some kind of school performance, and everybody's parent was there but mine. I'm standing there, alone. Always was alone.
    • Reiterman & Jacobs 1982, pp. 16–17
  • If my wife said, I'm not going to be a communist, I'd say, well, forget it, by God, I'll forget you too.
    • "[2]" FBI No. Q265 (October 17, 1978)
  • I have failed [...] I live for my people because they need me. But whenever they leave, they tell lies about the place.
    • Talking to his attorney Charles Garry after the Leo Ryan visit, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 71

Death Tape (November 18, 1978)

  • I'd like to choose my own kind of death, for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell. Tired of it.
  • So my opinion is that you be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide; it’s a revolutionary act. We can’t go back; they won’t leave us alone. They’re mow going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen. And there’s no way, no way we can survive.
    • Suicide tape, quoted in Maaga 1998, p. 148, Walliss 2004, p. 73 (November 18, 1978)
  • If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace.
  • Take our life from us. We laid it down. We got tired. We didn't commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
    • Last words on "Death Tape" FBI No. Q042 (November 18, 1978)
  • Are we black, proud, and socialist, or what are we?
    • Death Tape, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 77, Chidester 1988, p. 158

About Jim Jones

  • Jim Jones was a self-obsessed American cult leader who manipulated the poor and vulnerable, demanded their complete obedience, and ordered the murder of those who questioned his integrity. At the end he killed or convinced nearly a thousand people — including two hundred children — to take their own lives in a jungle settlement in South America called ‘Jonestown’, constructed around his own warped and paranoid fantasy.
  • We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.
  • Constructing or adopting a belief system in which one is either God's prophet or God himself inflates the ego to monstrous proportions. Koresh was more deeply concerned with religion, Jim Jones with racial equality and an egalitarian society. But both compensated for isolation and lack of love in childhood by becoming infatuated with power, and both ended up with delusions of their own divinity.
    • Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), p. 18
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