SUPERSTITION QUOTES II
quotations about superstition
Aaah ... when two Neptunes appear in the sky it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
I wish to substitute humanity for superstition, the love of our fellow men, for the fear of God.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Six Interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on Six Sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Waste Books
In doing practically only the things which He testifies He cares nothing about, superstition neglects those which He has ordained and said are pleasing to Him or even openly rejects them. Therefore those who (in order to worship God) establish religions which have their source in their own minds, only worship their own dreams.
JOHN CALVIN
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
Aren't we supposed to free ourselves from lies and superstition? Isn't that the obligation of intelligent beings?
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
The most infallible mark of ignorance is superstition.
STANISLAUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Hence, to the realms of Night, dire Demon, hence!
Thy chain of adamant can bind
That little world, the human mind,
And sink its noblest powers to impotence.
SAMUEL RODGERS
Ode to Superstition
The beginning of superstition was the subtlety of Satan; the beginning of true religion, the service of God.
GENNADIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The general root of superstition: namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
FRANCIS BACON
The Collected Works of Francis Bacon
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816
Religion is not removed by removing superstition.
CICERO
De Divinatione
The funny thing about superstitions is that the nonsense ones are perfectly reasonable if they're YOUR superstitions, it's everybody else's that are ridiculous.
FLAVIA BERTOLINI
"Don't do that, it's bad luck! There are a lot of superstitions out there, and some of them are really quite peculiar", Mirror, April 30, 2017
The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Take theology from the world, and the money wasted on superstition will do away with want.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Six Interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on Six Sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
The quaking bystanders in a superstitious age would soon have slain an isolated bold man in the beginning of his innovations.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
To think that now the 19th century is so far advanced, education and knowledge in the power of being acquired by every English-speaking race, and most foreign, superstition still exists, not only amongst the humbler and partially educated, but also amongst the upper classes, the learned, scientific and most erudite minds--is almost unaccountable to ordinary thinking people. The Roman Catholic believes in holy water, the Ritualist in the consecration of churches and burial grounds; the devout but humble Presbyterian in the necessity of a person who has viewed a corpse touching the same before leaving; and thousands of all creeds and classes in the possession of a child's caul as a charm against being drowned, if not other dangers, &c. & c. Now, the only consecration any church or other building can have is when persons assemble in it to worship God, not with outward signs or ceremonies, but with the heart; not according to the letter of the ritual, but in spirit and in truth. Superstition, then, is a clear proof of a weak mind and diluted Christianity. Do then, ye victims to superstition, forebodings of evil, and ye blind followers of the blind, think of Cromwell's grand speech to his army of Roundheads: "Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry." And think of the heroic and simple faith of the Pilgrim Fathers who launched out in their primitively-constructed vessel on the waves of the storm-tossed Atlantic to seek in an unknown world on the other side the freedom to worship that great unknown Being in whom they placed childlike and implicit faith, and at early dawn on the dreary ocean, and at the solemn vesper hour, made more solemn by their lone isolated position on the dreary desert of waters that surrounded them, they joined in one cry, one solemn resolve, which sounded clear above the roaring of the tempestuous waves, and said: Faith of our fathers, simple faith, we will be true to thee.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Superstition", Short Essays
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
The Complete Essays