Superstitions Quotes - Page 10

• Patriotism is a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion.

  Gustave Herve

  Patriotism, Brutal, Inhumane

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• In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Life, Real, Ignorance

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1988). “Shelley's Prose: Or the Trumpet of a Prophecy”

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• Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

  Abraham Kuyper

  Faith, Real, Degrees

  Abraham Kuyper (1931). “Lectures on Calvinism”, p.131, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.

  Shirley Jackson

  Mind, Defense, Armor

  Shirley Jackson (1987). “The haunting of Hill House”, Penguin Group USA

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• I like to say magic is the world's second oldest profession, a mystical and often awe-inspiring spectacle that, throughout the ages, has blended superstition, trickery and religion.

  Criss Angel

  Magic, Age, World

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• Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

  Isaac Asimov

  Stars, Ignorance, Humanity

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• Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't blame them. It's superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need... if you throw salt over your shoulder... if you don't step on the cracks, then maybe you'll be immune. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this could never happen to you.

  Jodi Picoult

  Feel Better, People, Giving

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• A woman’s beauty lies, not in any exaggeration of the specialized zones, nor in any general harmony that could be worked out by means of the sectio aurea or a similar aesthetic superstition; but in the arabesque of the spine. The curve by which the back modulates into the buttocks. It is here that grace sits and rides a woman’s body.

  John Updike

  Lying, Mean, Curves

  Laurie G. Kirszner, John Updike (1998). “A and P”, Heinle & Heinle Pub

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• Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.

  Bernard Beckett

  Fear, Optimistic, Years

  "Genesis". Book by Bernard Beckett, www.npr.org. 2010.

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• I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.

  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

  Teaching, Knowledge, Men

  "Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey". Book by Andrew Mango, 1999.

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• The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, Taken, Biblical

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• If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  People, Justice, Humanity

  "Ingersollia: Gems of Thought".

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• 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

  Way, Bluffs, Against Religion

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.65, Ballantine Books

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• You and I have been through too much together. We're too close, too connected. I wasn't that crazy on spirit when I said you're my flame in the dark. We chase away the shadows around each other. Our backgrounds don't matter. What we have is bigger than that. I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too.

  Richelle Mead

  Crazy, Love You, Dark

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Indigo Spell: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.156, Penguin

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• I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too.

  Richelle Mead

  Love You, Logic, I Know You Love Me

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Indigo Spell: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.156, Penguin

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• The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Liberty, Lasts

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.

  Gore Vidal

  Children, Revenge, Dark

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• Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.

  Victor Hugo

  War, Struggle, Hypocrisy

  Victor Hugo (1987). “Les Misérables”, Signet Classics

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• You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Ignorance, Long, Community

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “The Spinoza Problem: A Novel”, p.84, Basic Books

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• Religion without science is superstition. Science without religion is materialism.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Materialism

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• We're all entitled to our superstitions.

  Tea Obreht

  Entitled

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• The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now...cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.

  Ben Elton

  Book, Ignorance, Keys

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• e idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Attitude, Humility

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• No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Jesus, Dragons, Names

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3226, e-artnow

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• During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed amoung advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.

  Albert Einstein

  School, Thinking, Knowing

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.20, Open Road Media

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