My entire life is a miracle. And so is yours. That I know for sure. No matter how you came to be—whether you were wanted or "an accident" (as I was labeled for many years)—your being here to read these words is awesome.

It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Look around you, he said. There is no prophet in the earth's long chronicle who's not honored here today. Whatever form you spoke of you were right.

They were saddened that [Rawlins] was not coming back but they said that a man leaves much when he leaves his own country. They said that it was no accident of circumstance that a man be born in a certain country and not some other and they said that the weathers and seasons that form a land form also the inner fortunes of men in their generations and are passed on to their children and are not so easily come by otherwise.

No man was to be eulogized for what he did; or censured for what he did or did not do," because "all of us are the children of conditions, of circumstances, of environment , of education, of acquired habits and of heredity molding men as they are and will forever be.

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear. "To be known.

Stripped bare, the human soul has one real desire: to know and be known.

Maybe only an orphan can understand this, but we had been cut free from our anchor and the blow was crushing. We didn't know who we were, and more importantly, we didn't know whose we were -- forever proving that identity precedes purpose. You can't know who you are until you've settled whose you are. [Bones, to Murphy Shepherd, about himself and his brother Frank]

All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need... To be known.

The baby boom eventually prompted Hubbard to order that no one could get pregnant without his permission; according to several Sea Org members, any woman disobeying his command would be "off-loaded" to another Scientology organization or flown to New York for an abortion.

How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God.