Superstitions Quotes - Page 26

• If anyone decided to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to give liquor its right name, so be it; and let him dub the round world "Mother of the Gods" so long as he is careful not really to infest his mind with base superstitions.

  Lucretius

  Mother, Sea, Names

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• Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

  Immanuel Kant

  Religious, Men, Thinking

  "German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures" by Karl Hillebrand, (p. 208), 1880.

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• If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven. What many people call sin is not sin; I do many things to break down superstition, and I will break it down.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  People, Heaven, Sin

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• God's only excuse is that he does not exist.

  Stendhal

  Atheist, Doe, Belief

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• Science that abdicates its cultural values risks being perceived as an extension of technology, an instrument in the hands of political or economic power. Humanity that disavows science risks falling into the hands of superstition.

  Nicola Cabibbo

  Fall, Technology, Hands

  "Address to the Holy Father". "The cultural values of science", The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 105, page xiv, November 8-11, 2002.

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• A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate...is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Fate

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “My Several Worlds: A Personal Record”, p.69, Open Road Media

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• Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds.

  Northrop Frye

  Benefits, Kind, Thrive

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.442, University of Toronto Press

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• I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.

  Ralph Steadman

  Dark, Artist, Impossible Situations

  "The Joke's Over". Book by Ralph Steadman, 2006.

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• In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Atheism, World, Lasts

  Robert Green Ingersoll, Herman Eugene Kittredge (1909). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly.

  H. Rider Haggard

  Men, Littles, Way

  H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lin Carter, Rudyard Kipling, Eando Binder (2014). “The Lost World MEGAPACK ®: 22 Modern and Classic Tales”, p.421, Wildside Press LLC

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• If you live in a world where the population is separating itself from science and entering an age of superstition, as a marketer, selling to people who will believe anything, it is a golden age.

  Daniel Henninger

  Believe, People, Age

  Source: www.wsj.com

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• Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.

  Lord Acton

  Strong, Ignorance, Men

  "The History of Freedom in Antiquity". Lord Acton's opening statement of his speech on February 28, 1877; later quoted in "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, 1907.

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• We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.

  John Ralston Saul

  Lying, Two, Quality

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse; clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind.

  Walter Lippmann

  Mind, Fads, Innocence

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.38, Harvard University Press

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• Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Believe, Humanity, Fancy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.56, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explaining mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?

  Willa Cather

  Attitude, Numbers, Mind

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.45, U of Nebraska Press

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• Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

  John Ruskin

  Passion, Sacrifice, Men

  John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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• Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.

  Aldous Huxley

  Kings, Priests, Has Beens

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

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• Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

  Lord Acton

  Giving, Birth, Sometimes

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.296, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Pillars, Sabbath, Strongholds

  William Lloyd Garrison (1852). “Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison: With an Appendix ...”, p.100

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• Superstition is the spleen of the soul.

  Alexander Pope

  Soul, Spleen

  Alexander Pope, William Roscoe (1847). “The works of Alexander Pope, esq., with notes and illustrations, by himself and others. To which are added, a new life of the author, an Estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks by William Roscoe, esq”, p.379

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• Religion and science are the two wings upon which man's intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Fall, Men, Hands

  "Paris Talks". Book by `Abdu'l-Bahá, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1912.

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• The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities of higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear - is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Giving

  Speech before Senate Judiciary Committee, 18 Jan. 1892

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• The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Blind Belief, Atheism, India

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1989). “Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography : with Musings on Recent Events in India”, Vintage

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• Science . . . has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, except through science.

  Luther Burbank

  Ignorance, Eye, Light

  Luther Burbank (1927). “My Beliefs”

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