Superstitions Quotes - Page 4

• Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Race, Alive, Village

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.183, Cambridge University Press

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• When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

  Denis Diderot

  Birthday, Goodbye, Farewell

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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• Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, accomplished.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Accomplished, Mines, Superstitious

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Superstition is the poetry of life.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Literature

  'Sprüche in Prosa' (1819) 3

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• Therefore let men withdraw themselves from errors; and laying aside corrupt superstitions, let them acknowledge their Father and Lord, whose excellence cannot be estimated, nor His greatness perceived, nor His beginning comprehended.

  Lactantius

  Father, Greatness, Men

  Lactantius (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Lactantius (Annotated Edition)”, p.36, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Religious, Influence, Bondage

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.471, UPNE

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• Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

  Mark Twain

  Song, Law, Care

  Following the Equator ch. 51, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897) See Auden 22; Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Percy Shelley 15

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• I don't have any superstitions, but what I always travel with is my pillow and my coffee.

  Natalie Coughlin

  Coffee, Pillow

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• I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

  Voltaire

  Friendship, Hate, Enemy

  "Déclaration de Voltaire". Note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, February 28, 1778.

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• To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Success, Wisdom

  Unpopular Essays (1950) "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"

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• I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.

  Sarah Bernhardt

  Country, Business, Critical Moments

  Sarah Bernhardt (1968). “Memories of my life, being my personal, professional, and social recollections as woman and artist”

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• Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

  Helen Keller

  Happiness, Inspiring, Success

  Let Us Have Faith (1940)

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• I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.

  Carl Sagan

  Song, Years, Worry

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• Lobbying is the world's second - oldest profession.

  Bill Press

  Lobbying, World, Profession

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• What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Hypocrite, Errors

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.

  Ian Mcewan

  Littles, Said, Reader

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• The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Roots, Missing

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• The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Grace, Liberty

  Letter to Roger C.Weightman, 24 June 1826.

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• It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Running, Country, Science

  Jawaharlal Nehru, H. N. Sethna (1981). “Proceedings of the International Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society in Developing Countries, Bombay, November 1979”

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• Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

  Carl Sagan

  Knowledge, Science, Wish

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 332, 1980.

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• In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.

  William Robertson Smith

  Religion, Savages, May

  William Robertson Smith (1907). “Religion of the Semites (Ppr)”, p.55, Transaction Publishers

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• May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Blessing, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin. Reports and opinions while Secretary of State”, p.450

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• All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Atheist, Ignorance, Atheism

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• What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Mean, Acceptance, Judgment

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• When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Wise, Spiritual, Prayer

  Mahatma Gandhi (1948). “Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, p.63, Courier Corporation

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