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
There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
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
Religion is not removed by removing superstition.
CICERO
De Divinatione
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
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
The most infallible mark of ignorance is superstition.
STANISLAUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
One of the interesting things about superstitions is their seemingly arbitrary nature. Like, why 13? Why black cats? Why can't you walk under that ladder? It has no rational bearing. Yet somehow you feel like you're tempting fate, and the outcome, a bad outcome, that could befall you is going to be worse because you did something that people say you shouldn't do.
TOM GILOVICH
"Why Do You Believe in Superstitions? Here's What the Science Says", Reader's Digest, December 29, 2016
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
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
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
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
What if cards don't go my way?
And it's sure to spoil my day
But in voices loud and clear you say to me, "It's only superstition
It's only your imagination
It's only all of the things that you fear and the things from which you can't escape"
COLDPLAY
"Only Superstition", brothers & sisters
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
How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"The Horla"
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
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
Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.
COLIN WILSON
The Occult: A History
Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.
CARL JUNG
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
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