Superstitions Quotes - Page 20

• People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! It is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.

  Thomas Paine

  Lying, Believe, Book

  Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.52, Rowman & Littlefield

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I detest tradition for tradition's sake; the half-alive; that which is not real. I feel no hatred of individuals, but of customs, traditions; superstitions that go against life, against truth, against the reality of experience, against the spontaneous living out of the sense of wonder-of fresh experience, freshly seen and communicated.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Real, Hatred, Half

  4 Copy quote

• There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends."

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Children, Athlete, Wrecks

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The Works of Robert G.Ingersoll. [Dresden Ed.]”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• People think I must have all these superstitions, but I don't. I use my batting gloves 'til they wear out. I broke four or five bats during the streak, and I didn't cry over any of them.

  Jimmy Rollins

  Thinking, People, Bats

  4 Copy quote

• The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Jesus, Philosophy, Example

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.269

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Punishment [by Nero] was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.

  Suetonius

  Christian, Men, Class

  Suetonius (1997). “Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars, book V-VIII ; Lives of illustrious men”, Loeb Classical Library

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Jesus, Age, Panic

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1886). “Essays and Letters”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Men, Selfishness

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1980). “Shelley on Love: An Anthology”, p.83, Univ of California Press

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tend to view the superstitions or fragments of myth as triggers for lyric inquiry. I also find I think of this kind of language as ars poetica - if we can find the right combination of words, we can make something improbably or extraordinary happen.

  Anna Journey

  Thinking, Views, Inquiry

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tend to gravitate toward the realm of superstition (cures and such) and odd scientific facts (like bioluminescent shrimp and fistulated cows). I like the intimacy that I often find in the grotesque.

  Anna Journey

  Shrimp, Cows, Facts

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.

  Ernst Cassirer

  Religious, Thinking, Expression

  Ernst Cassirer, Maureen Lukay (2006). “An essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture”, Meiner Verlag

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why, in our age of science, [do] we still have laws and policies which come from an age of superstition?

  Shereen El Feki

  Motivation, Inspiration, Law

  4 Copy quote

• There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.

  Emma Goldman

  Ignorance, Mean, Earth

  Emma Goldman (2012). “Living My Life”, p.207, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Financiers are great mythomaniacs, their explanations and superstitions are those of primitive men; the world is a jungle to them.They perceive acutely that they are at the dawn of economic history.

  Christina Stead

  Men, Primitive Man, Dawn

  Christina Stead (2012). “House of All Nations”, p.122, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.

  Russell Kirk

  Men, Decision, Intuition

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.38, Regnery Publishing

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject--art, money, sex, food, health.

  Mason Cooley

  Art, Sex, New York

  5 Copy quote

• I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps

  Thornton Wilder

  Men, Bird, Nonsense

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Ides of March: A Novel”, p.5, Harper Collins

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life - her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter - are all worthy of art.

  August Wilson

  Mother, Song, Art

  August Wilson (1997). “Seven Guitars”, p.10, Penguin

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The church is challenging such negative cultural elements as superstition, rugged individualism, materialism, hedonism, permissiveness and utilitarianism.

  Francis Arinze

  Challenges, Church, Negative

  "Arinze Sees Fundamentalism Posing Bar to Interfaith Relations". www.beliefnet.com. December 2001.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a member of no party. I have no ideology. I'm a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that's all around us.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Party, Struggle, Stupidity

  Source: www.usatoday.com

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before the word gay had really been invented, was there's no such thing. Only a country, basically as mindless about these matters - based upon our peasant superstitions, religious superstitions - would they make categories. Everybody's everything.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Religious, Gay

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But, if the knowledge of the occult powers of nature opens the spiritual sight of man, enlarges his intellectual faculties, and leads him unerringly to a profounder veneration for the Creator, on the other hand ignorance, dogmatic narrow-mindedness, and a childish fear of looking to the bottom of things, invariably leads to fetish-worship and superstition.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Spiritual, Ignorance, Men

  H. P. Blavatsky (2012). “Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology”, p.41, Cambridge University Press

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the war started, religion and superstition (whatever the difference is) permeated the lives of ordinary soldiers, who lived in a thought world not too far removed from the seventeenth century.

  Philip Jenkins

  War, Differences, Soldier

  Interview with Scott McKnight, www.patheos.com. January 23, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

  Anne Tyler

  Writing, Thinking, Literature

  Penguin Random House interview, www.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think superstition has a lot to do with fear: the less, the better.

  Penelope Cruz

  Thinking

  "Exclusive: Penélope Cruz on Shooting the 2013 Campari Calendar". Interview with Kristina Soriano, www.elle.com. November 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source