Quotes and Sayings about Superstition
"The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Men, Superstition)
"A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition."
- Jose Bergamin
(Related: Belief, Doubt, Superstition)
"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
(Related: Life, Countries, Now)
"Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence."
- Countess of Blessington
(Related: Religion, Fear, Belief, Confidence, Superstition)
"The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance."
- Robert Bork
(Related: Religion, Science, Atheism, Religious, Superstition)
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Religion, Superstition)
"Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain."
- John Calvin
(Related: God, Man, Mind, Superstition, Will)
"In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway."
- Tucker Carlson
(Related: Absence, Superstition, Theory)
"Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science."
- Hal Clement
(Related: Science, Right, Superstition)
"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
(Related: Help, May, Race)
"Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other."
- James F. Cooper
(Related: Ignorance, Superstition)
"My only feeling about superstition is that it's unlucky to be behind at the end of the game."
- Duffy Daugherty
(Related: End, Feeling, Superstition)
"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
(Related: Age, Music, Poetry, Excellence, Goodbye, Old, Painting, Superstition, Temperament)
"Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs."
- Marlene Dietrich
(Related: Beliefs, Habits)
"We're not as materialistic and income-tax conscious as we think. At the moment our superstitions are tucked away, but come out sometimes in strange ways sex crimes, black masses."
- Terence Fisher
(Related: Sex, Income)
"Superstition? Who can define the boundary line between the superstition of yesterday and the scientific fact of tomorrow?"
- Garrett Fort
(Related: Fact, Superstition, Tomorrow, Yesterday)
"Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them."
- Thomas Fuller
(Related: Promises, Superstition)
"I have a superstition about saying too much about what I want to happen, just in case it all disappears, or someone else comes along and beats me to it."
- Gil Gerard
(Related: Saying, Superstition, Want)
"Superstition is the poetry of life."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Life, Poetry, Superstition)
"Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, accomplished."
- Ulysses S. Grant
"The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition."
- George Herbert
(Related: Atheism, Devil, Superstition, World)
"I have only one superstition... Touch all the bases when I hit a home run."
- George Herman
(Related: Home, Superstition)
"Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible."
- Mark Hopkins
(Related: Religion, Morality, Superstition)
"The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Home, America, Enemies, Ignorance, Incompetence, Superstition)
"A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices."
- Johan Huizinga
(Related: Thought, Confusion, Popular, Superstition)
"History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: History, End, Fate)
"It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: End, Fate)
"In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable."
- Hypatia
(Related: Men, Truth, Fact, Fight, Living, Superstition, Will)
"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them."
- Hypatia
(Related: Mind, Miracles, Myths, Pain, Tragedy, Years)
"To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy."
- William Ralph Inge
(Related: Religion, Philosophy, Popular, Superstition)
"Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women."
- Henry James
(Related: Men, Women, People, Class, Devotion, Infatuation, Superstition)
"Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of."
- Joseph Joubert
(Related: Religion, Superstition)
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."
- Helen Keller
(Related: Experience, Life, Men, Nature, Adventure, Children, Danger, Nothing, Security, Superstition)
"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
(Related: Men, Father, Greatness, Beginning, Errors, Excellence)
"The left sees nothing but bigotry and superstition in the popular defense of the family or in popular attitudes regarding abortion, crime, busing, and the school curriculum."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Family, Abortion, Bigotry, Crime, Curriculum, Defense, Nothing, Popular, School, Superstition)
"Superstition is the poison of the mind."
- Joseph Lewis
(Related: Mind, Poison, Superstition)
"Superstitions and belief in magic are perennial in just the same way as religion, and something near to being universal among mankind; and why this is so may be interesting, but in most cases the beliefs themselves are devoid of interesting content, at least to me."
- Bryan Magee
(Related: Religion, Belief, Being, Beliefs, Content, Magic, Mankind, May)
"Basically I say a few prayers before a game and let that direct me, not superstitions."
- Brian McBride
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: Government, Man)
"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."
- Pope John Paul II
(Related: Religion, Science, Error, Superstition)
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Wisdom, Fear, Beginning, Cruelty, Superstition)
"I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run."
- Babe Ruth
(Related: Home, Superstition)
"They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black."
- John Selden
(Related: Colors, Superstition, Wrong)
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition."
- Rod Serling
(Related: Science, Infinity, Light, Man, Shadow, Space, Superstition)
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Art, Education, Science, Folly, Fool, Philosophy, Superstition, University)
"You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them."
- Curt Siodmak
(Related: People, Superstition)
"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."
- Adam Smith
(Related: Science, Enthusiasm, Poison, Superstition)
"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
(Related: Religion, May, Nothing, State, Terror)
"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.
(Related: God, People, Heaven, Sin, Superstition, Will)
"The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: Women, Religious)
"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: Religion, Soul, Christian, Memory, Suffering, Superstition)
"The nations were awakened from the sleep of death, as the words of eternal life flowed from the Apostles' lips, - the temples of superstition were shut or destroyed, and churches were planted in every part of the civilized world."
- John Strachan
(Related: Life, Death, Churches, Nations, Sleep, Superstition, Words, World)
"Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural."
- Theophrastus
(Related: Cowardice, Supernatural)
"This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition."
- Polly Toynbee
(Related: Islam, Reason, Superstition)
"I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!"
- Joanna Trollope
(Related: Superstition, Talking)
"I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely."
- Anne Tyler
(Related: Superstition, Writing)
"Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?"
- Judith Viorst
(Related: Superstition, Wood)
"Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth."
- Voltaire
(Related: Religion, Mother, Daughter, Astrology, Astronomy, Daughters, Earth, Superstition)
"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."
- Voltaire
(Related: Thought, Knowledge, Virtue, Ignorance, Spirit, Superstition, Virginity)
"It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue."
- Voltaire
(Related: Virtue, Mind, Virginity)
"Although I myself don't go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it's superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time."
- Barbara Walters
(Related: Time, Church, Superstition)
"Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish."
- Adam Weishaupt
(Related: Purpose, Circumstance, Constitution, Superstition, Tyranny, Will)
"This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice."
- Adam Weishaupt
(Related: Clouds, Prejudice, Reason, Sun, Superstition, Understanding, Will)
"Conscience without judgment is superstition."
- Benjamin Whichcote
(Related: Conscience, Judgment, Superstition)