Superstitions Quotes - Page 16

• ...I just want to be free of the fears and anxieties and the superstitions of religion. An 'avenging GOD'? One who created Hell for those who don't believe? I thought we were the perfect and holy children of GOD? How could any limits possibly be put upon us? Hell.. really? I'm sorry, but... no. Wrong. You're wrong. That's an insane GOD and therefore not mine. Because, see, GOD would be very sane, don't you get it?

  Bill Hicks

  Sorry, Children, Believe

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• Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.

  Boris Sidis

  Religious, Agency, Evil

  Boris Sidis (1916). “The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases”

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• We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.

  Eugen Drewermann

  Struggle, Hands, Talking

  Speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland, May 21, 1977.

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• What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. It's not a strictly spiritual affair; it has psychological roles to fulfill. You might not want it to be a religion based on your own experience but that's like wanting to clean up your dreams

  Gary Snyder

  Dream, Spiritual, Magic

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• Civilized men arrived in the Pacific, armed with alcohol, syphilis, trousers, and the Bible.

  Havelock Ellis

  Men, Alcohol, Syphilis

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• What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!

  Samuel Richardson

  Running, Heart, Religion

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• Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.

  David Hume

  Ignorance, Pride, Together

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• Lutheranism is essentially German... It worships a God who is neither just nor merciful.

  William Ralph Inge

  Belief, Worship, Merciful

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• As for myself, I do not believe that such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is proper not to oppose them.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Jesus, Believe, People

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• For many, the regressive belief in superstitions and miracles is an escape from the hardships of life. Once trapped into irrationalism, they become more incapable of mastering reality. It is a vicious circle, like an addiction. They become vulnerable to exploitation by astrologers, godmen, dubious pseudo-psychologists, corrupt politicians and the whole mega-industry of irrationalism.

  Sanal Edamaruku

  Reality, Circles, Addiction

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• The social revolution...cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped itself of all superstitions concerning the past.

  Karl Marx

  Past, Revolution, Social

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• Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?

  Thomas Paine

  Honor, Indifference, Tales

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.109

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• How do you get on with your father ' Beleth asked. 'Very well ' Pyrgus answered loyally although it was far from the truth. 'I ate mine ' Beleth told him. 'He got old and feeble and useless but he wanted to hold on to power. So I took steps. Tasted disgusting - stringy tough smelly ... you know how fathers are - but it's the custom here. You're supposed to absorb the essence that way. Rank superstition of course but well ... tradition.

  Herbie Brennan

  Father, Essence, Useless

  Herbie Brennan (2011). “Faerie Wars”, p.167, A&C Black

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• It is a perverse faith, in that it reveres the "environment" ahead of people who live in it. It is a most ascetic superstition, in that it demands we live less happily and less freely and with less prosperity - the opposite of, say, the Protestant work ethic that helped build Ontario.

  Ezra Levant

  Opposites, People, Work Ethic

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• The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. However valuable-even necessary-that may have been in enforcing good behavior on primitive peoples, their association is now counterproductive. Yet at the very moment when they should be decoupled, sanctimonious nitwits are calling for a return to morals based on superstition.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Tragedy, Calling, Hijacking

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• Always obey your parents. When they are present. This is the best policy in the long run. Because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment.

  Mark Twain

  Running, Thinking, Long

  Mark Twain (2004). “Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race”, p.135, Univ of California Press

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• I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Religious, Antiques, Nehru

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. ... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.

  Richard Matheson

  Pain, Circles, People

  Richard Matheson (1954). “I Am Legend”, Greenwich, Connecticut : Fawcett

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• The serenity produced by the contemplation and philosophy of nature is the only remedy for prejudice, superstition, and inordinate self-importance, teaching us that we are all a part of Nature herself, strengthening the bond of sympathy which should exist between ourselves and our brother man. . .

  Luther Burbank

  Brother, Nature, Philosophy

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• I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and i do not find our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half of the world fools and the other half Hypocrites

  Thomas Jefferson

  Death, Hypocrite, Half

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• It is a very curious thing about superstition. One would expect that the man who had once seen his morbid dreams were not fulfilled would abandon them for the future; but on the contrary they grow even stronger just as the love of gambling increases in a man who has once lost in a lottery.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Dream, Men, Gambling

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• true philosophical atheism must be regarded as a superstition, often nurtured by an infantile wish to live in a world proportionate to one's own hopes or conceptual limitations.

  David Bentley Hart

  Philosophical, Wish, Atheism

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• No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary.

  Alan Watts

  Risk, Currents, Worthwhile

  Alan Watts (2017). “Alan Watts - In the Academy: Essays and Lectures”, p.275, SUNY Press

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• How about a positive LSD story? Wouldn't that be news-worthy, just the once? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition and lies? I think it would be news-worthy.

  Bill Hicks

  Lying, Thinking, Scare Tactics

  "Bill Hicks: Sane Man". Documentary, 1989.

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• The atheist worldview of life is a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.

  Howard Thompson

  Atheist, Humanity, Culture

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