Superstitions Quotes - Page 24

• I don't have many superstitions, just dumb things I don't talk about. I will not sign an autograph with a green pen.

  Mario Andretti

  Dumb, Green, Pens

  "The Mario Andretti Indy 500 Interview: Part II". Interview with Steven Capwell, www.littlepocketguide.com.

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• The greatest American superstition is belief in facts.

  Hermann Graf Keyserling

  Facts, Belief

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• If anything qualifies as an irony of history it would be this: that Marx and Engels throughout the nineteenth century wrote about America the United States as the great country of the future, of freedom and equality and a good life for the working man, and a country of revolution and emancipation, and of Russia as the great country of despotism, backwardness, savagery and superstition.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, Good Life, Men

  Source: www.heavenonearthdocumentary.com

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• We have fought long and hard to escape from medieval superstition. I, for one, do not wish to go back.

  James Randi

  Long, Wish, Medieval

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• Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.

  Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  Art, Philosophy, Ambition

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• Superstition has its practical uses.

  Barbara Mertz

  Use, Practicals

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• Astrology is a disease, not a science... It is a tree under the shadow of which all sorts of superstitions thrive. ... Only fools and charlatans lend value to it.

  Maimonides

  Science, Astrology, Tree

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• It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.

  Ian O'Doherty

  Believe, Israel, Europe

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• One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

  James D. Watson

  Father, Sacrifice, Fate

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• It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion.

  David Hume

  Race, Principles, World

  David Hume (2016). “The Natural History of Religion: Revision of Great Book”, p.5, VM eBooks

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• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Mean, Writing

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• there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Cutting, Age, Tvs

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.66, Penguin

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• Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is!

  Swami Vivekananda

  Strong, Faces, No Fear

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.434, Manonmani Publishers

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• Henceforward the Christian Churches having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, came into the hands of the Encratites: and the Heathens, who in the fourth century came over in great numbers to the Christians, embraced more readily this sort of Christianity, as having a greater affinity with their old superstitions, than that of the sincere Christians; who by the lamps of the seven Churches of Asia, and not by the lamps of the Monasteries, had illuminated the Church Catholic during the three first centuries.

  Isaac Newton

  Christian, Numbers, Hands

  Isaac Newton “Observations”, Lulu.com

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• Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially in respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Desire, Use

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.98, Routledge

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• My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Mother, Made, Plus

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• Superstitions add texture to life.

  Ilona Andrews

  Add, Texture

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• In a way, the futile excuses many people use to cover their superstitions are demolished. They think it is enough to have some sort of religious fervor, however ridiculous, not realizing that true religion must be according to God's will as the perfect measure; that He can never deny Himself and is no mere spirit form to be changed around according to individual preference.

  John Calvin

  Religious, Thinking, People

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• As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.

  Andy Kaufman

  Country, Animal, Mindless

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• The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.

  Aristophanes

  God, Simple, Expression

  Aristophanes, William Arrowsmith (1962). “The clouds: Translated by William Arrowsmith, with sketches by Thomas McClure”

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• All who have their reward on Earth, the fruits Of painful superstition and blind zeal, Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find Fit retribution, empty as their deeds.

  Don DeLillo

  Men, Earth, Deeds

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• Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Belief, Nexus

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016). “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”, p.17, Clube de Autores

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• The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death, and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life. In the midst of life he calls us and summons us to him.

  Sadegh Hedayat

  Death, Children, Deception

  Sadegh Hedayat (2010). “The Blind Owl”, p.56, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Worship, Invisible, Seeds

  Thomas Hobbes (2015). “Leviathan”, p.122, Xist Publishing

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• Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Philosophy, Wells

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.48

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