SUPERSTITION QUOTES
quotations about superstition
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
H. L. MENCKEN
Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.
VOLTAIRE
"A Treatise on Toleration"
Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, fear and faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
"Individuality", The Gods and Other Lectures
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
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
An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
JOSÉ BERGAMÍN
El cohete y la estrella
I want more thought and less fear, more manhood and less superstition.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Six Interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on Six Sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
Superstition is the reservoir of all truths.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
Superstition is the poetry of life.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
IT WERE better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal, men should say, there was no such man at all, as Plutarch, than that they should say, that there was one Plutarch, that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn. And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men. Therefore theism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. 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. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the Schoolmen bare great sway, that the Schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and such engines of orbs, to save the phenomena; though they knew there were no such things; and in like manner, that the Schoolmen had framed a number of subtle and intricate axioms, and theorems, to save the practice of the church. The causes of superstition are: pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies; excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; overgreat reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the church; the stratagems of prelates, for their own ambition and lucre; the favoring too much of good intentions, which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine matters, by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations: and, lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters. Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth deformity to an ape, to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion, makes it the more deformed. And as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt, into a number of petty observances. There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best, if they go furthest from the superstition, formerly received; therefore care would be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad; which commonly is done, when the people is the reformer.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Temple"
Superstition vanishes before truth.
ARNOBIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
A foolish superstition introduces the influences of the gods even in the smallest matters.
LIVY
Annales
And what, O superstition, have been thy cruel triumphs! Thou hast selected thy victims from among the excellent of the earth; it is thy peculiar character to have reversed all the laws of nature, and of God; to have inflicted on men of the sublimest virtue, the tortures of the foulest villainy; to have rendered purity unsullied, and piety sweeter and more celestial than thou couldst comprehend, the certain prey of misery and death; thou hast fashioned to thyself a God stern and sullen, retiring in awful gloom from His creation not to be appeased but by blood! Thy worship has been worthy of thy idol; the dungeon has been thy chosen temple, instruments of torture thy means of instruction, the stake thy eloquence, and thy piety the abolition of all human sympathy.
SOUTHWOOD SMITH
The Chartist Circular, Volumes 1-2
All men are superstitious; they only differ in degrees.
JOHN TOLAND
attributed, Day's Collacon
Oftimes our belief, if in another, we would regard a superstition.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
ADAM SMITH
The Wealth of Nations
The tendency to superstitions should be counteracted from the earliest age; or rather steps should be taken to protect the mind of the child from superstitions imposed upon it by ignorant nurses or silly mothers.
ARTHUR ALFRED LYNCH
Moods of Life
Superstition is but the fear of belief.
THEODORET
attributed, Day's Collacon