Superstitions famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
-- A.J. Ayer -
William Henry Flower the Anglican too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had 'encrusted' Christianity 'in the days of ignorance and superstition'.
-- Adrian Desmond -
For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.
-- Albert Einstein -
I know very well that many scientists consider dowsing as they do astrology, as a type of ancient superstition. According to my conviction this is, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the uncanny reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time.
-- Albert Einstein -
Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.
-- Aldous Huxley -
I used to have a lot of superstitions, and then I realized that it was kind of hogwash. Once I let go of them, I relaxed a lot.
-- Amy Adams -
Christ...an anarchist who succeeded. That's all.
-- Andre Malraux -
Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it.
-- Andre Malraux -
There is a power under your control that is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire.
-- Andrew Carnegie -
Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.
-- Anne Rice -
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
-- Anne Tyler -
Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.
-- Archibald Alexander Hodge -
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 -
Conscience without judgment is superstition.
-- Benjamin Whichcote -
Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress...
-- Blaise Cendrars -
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 -
Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.
-- Carl Sagan -
If there be a God, I think he would like me to paint Africa British-Red as possible.
-- Cecil Rhodes -
One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.
-- Celia Green -
Science of to-day-the superstition of to-morrow. Science of to-morrow-the superstition of to-day.
-- Charles Fort -
All people have their blind side-their superstitions.
-- Charles Lamb -
You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.
-- Chinua Achebe -
What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
-- Christopher Hitchens -
My work explores the frontier between rationalism and superstition and the wavering boundary between the two.
-- David Almond -
I've taken up the Bible again, somewhat in the spirit of W.C. Fields - looking for loopholes.
-- David Niven -
Superstition has been defined as the use of a form whose significance has been forgotten.
-- Dion Fortune -
My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.
-- Donald E. Westlake -
Religion glorifies the dogma of a despotic, mythical God. Atheism ennobles the interests of free and progressive Man. Religion is superstition. Atheism is sanity. Religion is medieval. Atheism is modern.
-- E. Haldeman-Julius -
So strong is the power of superstition that even though we know that we have been reverencing a sham, yet still we hesitate to admit the validity of our new-found convictions.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs -
I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
-- Edward Gibbon -
I decline Christianity because it is Jewish, because it is international, and because, in cowardly fashion, it preaches Peace on Earth.
-- Erich Ludendorff -
The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.
-- Frances Wright -
How much luckier than all the rest of mankind are the astrologers who, if they tell one truth among a hundred lies, obtain so much credit that even their lies are believed.
-- Francesco Guicciardini -
Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Superstition? Who can define the boundary line between the superstition of yesterday and the scientific fact of tomorrow?
-- Garrett Fort -
My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.
-- Garrett Fort -
Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence
-- George Holyoake -
A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.
-- George Iles -
A little superstition is a good thing to keep in one's bag of precautions.
-- Gertrude Atherton -
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 -
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
-- Gore Vidal -
The superstition in which we grew up, Though we may recognize it, does not lose Its power over us.-Not all are free Who make mock of their chains.
-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -
The modern superstition is that we're free of superstition.
-- Graham Joyce -
Patriotism is a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion.
-- Gustave Herve -
I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly.
-- H. Rider Haggard -
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 -
I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.
-- Harriet Martineau -
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
-- Helen Keller -
How do you get on with your father ' Beleth asked. 'Very well ' Pyrgus answered loyally although it was far from the truth. 'I ate mine ' Beleth told him. 'He got old and feeble and useless but he wanted to hold on to power. So I took steps. Tasted disgusting - stringy tough smelly ... you know how fathers are - but it's the custom here. You're supposed to absorb the essence that way. Rank superstition of course but well ... tradition.
-- Herbie Brennan -
To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing,
-- Hypatia -
Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.
-- James F. Cooper -
I think everybody gets caught up in superstitions. But I don't put much stock in them ... knock on wood.
-- Jason Akermanis -
The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru -
Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden.
-- Jean-Francois de La Harpe -
I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater -
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
-- John Adams -
Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was the belief in facts.
-- John Gunther -
The superstitions of today are the scientific facts of tomorrow.
-- John L. Balderston -
Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.
-- John Sterling -
Fanaticism is the child of false zeal and of superstition, the father of intolerance and of persecution.
-- John William Fletcher -
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
-- Jose Bergamin -
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
-- Joseph Joubert -
Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
-- Judith Viorst -
The worst of all superstitions may be that astrology is a superstition.
-- Kedar Joshi -
The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film.
-- Krzysztof Kieslowski -
there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?
-- Kurt Vonnegut -
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
-- Laurence Sterne -
Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.
-- Lenny Bruce -
The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!
-- Lenny Bruce -
Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.
-- Lord Acton -
Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.
-- M. Scott Peck -
Religion is not removed by removing superstition.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
There is in superstition a senseless fear of God.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
Superstition is an unreasoning fear of God.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
A genuine coincidence always means bad luck for me; it's my only superstition.
-- Margery Allingham -
Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.
-- Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington -
All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition.
-- Mario Puzo -
Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.
-- Mark Hopkins -
The North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is a gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite as bad as the Northern imitation of it.
-- Mark Twain -
When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
-- Mark Twain -
Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
-- Marlene Dietrich -
The belief that God will do everything for man is as untenable as the belief that man can do everything for himself. It, too, is based on a lack of faith. We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
We must learn that to expect God to do everything while we do nothing is not faith but superstition.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. -
when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.
-- Mary Roberts Rinehart -
fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless.
-- Marya Mannes -
I don't believe in superstitions. I just do certain things because I'm scared in case something will happen if I don't do them
-- Michael Owen -
Another great illusion that woman must ... destroy . .. is the impurity of sex, the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex - except in the mental attitude toward it ...
-- Mina Loy -
Once we make our decision, all things will come to us. Auspicious signs are not a superstition, but a confirmation. They are a response.
-- Ming-Dao Deng -
I don't have any superstitions, but what I always travel with is my pillow and my coffee.
-- Natalie Coughlin -
How surprisingly alive false ideas are! They even have their own evolution. At first they are highfalutin' 'truths,' then humdrum 'laws,' and finally superstitions.
-- Nina Berberova -
Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition.
-- Paul Kenneth Keller -
Because our ladies mostly attend Kalatshepams, (Religious discourses) they have fallen prey to the superstitions, blind beliefs, and immorality by the false and fictituous propaganda of the Brahmins
-- Periyar E. V. Ramasamy -
As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.
-- Philip Jose Farmer -
There are Universes begging for Gods, yet he hangs around this one looking for work.
-- Philip Jose Farmer
