Superstitions Quotes - Page 13

• I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

  Harriet Martineau

  Atheism, Next, Orthodoxy

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.568, Broadview Press

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• As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

  H. L. Mencken

  College, Thinking, Ymca

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• As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago.

  Harriet Martineau

  Wise, Christian, Giving Up

  Harriet Martineau (1877). “Harriet Martineau's autobiography, with memorials by M.W. Chapman”, p.356

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• Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

  David Hume

  Wise, Long, Silence

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1992). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.73, Hackett Publishing

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• Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Christian, Islands, Imagination

  Harry Persons Taber, Elbert Hubbard (1912). “The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest”

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• Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?

  Phil Donahue

  Religious, Cousin, Moving

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• Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Taken, Atheism

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• Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.

  Lenny Bruce

  Atheism, Yeah, Certain

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• I'm not superstitious. I don't really believe in star signs, sorry, or superstitions.

  Richard Branson

  Stars, Sorry, Believe

  A Drink With Interview, adrinkwith.com. April 29, 2015.

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• Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Ideas, Liberty, India

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.165, Rajpal & Sons

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• It is impossible to wait and weigh, in golden scales, the sentiments of prejudice and superstition that have gathered round the priests who are considered to be the custodians of Hinduism.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Waiting, Custodians, Prejudice

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “None High: None Low”

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• Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Intelligent, Men, Stupidity

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.213, Knopf

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• There is already enough superstition in our country. No effort should be spared to resist further addition in the shape of Gandhi worship.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Country, Effort, Shapes

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Pride, Men, Political

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.23, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.

  H. L. Mencken

  Profound, Expectations, Noble

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• The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Errors, Lace, Quaint

  National Review, January 16, 1962.

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• I do like to wear the same hat on game days, but I consider that more of a routine thing than a superstition.

  David Wright

  Games, Routine, Game Day

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

  Bill Vaughan

  Hate, Data, Peers

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• I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.

  Nicolas Cage

  Ladders, May, Able

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• The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered, as a singular event in the history of the human mind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Mind, Age, Ruins

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.272

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• So that, were it the purpose of God to produce comets as signs of his wrath it would be true to say that he is quickening a false devotion almost all over the world, increasing the number of pilgrims to Mecca, multiplying the offerings to the most famous impostors, inducing men to build mosques for Mohammedan worship, causing the invention of new superstitions among the dervishes - in a word, stimulating many abominable things which otherwise might not have been.

  Pierre Bayle

  Men, Offering, Numbers

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• There is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Suffering, Politics, Economy

  Theodore Roosevelt (2006). “History as Literature and Other Essays”, p.247, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I don't think it's illegal. I don't think it's against the rules. It's as dangerous for me to have a toothpick in your mouth as it is to have a 200-pound man punch me in the face hard or try to kick me in the face. I'm more worried about that, to be honest. I don't have any superstitions. I won world titles with a toothpick. I defended it without a toothpick. It all depends. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. It's a bad habit. I know I shouldn't do it, but it's fine.

  Benson Henderson

  Men, Thinking, Trying

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• The tendency to superstitions should be counteracted from the earliest age; or rather steps should be taken to protect the mind of the child from superstitions imposed upon it by ignorant nurses or silly mothers.

  Arthur Alfred Lynch

  Mother, Children, Silly

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• Because our ladies mostly attend Kalatshepams, (Religious discourses) they have fallen prey to the superstitions, blind beliefs, and immorality by the false and fictituous propaganda of the Brahmins.

  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

  Religious, Blind Belief, Propaganda

  Collected works of Periyar E.V.R., p. 517, 2005.

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