Superstitions Quotes - Page 21

• I tend to gravitate toward the realm of superstition (cures and such) and odd scientific facts (like bioluminescent shrimp and fistulated cows). I like the intimacy that I often find in the grotesque.

  Anna Journey

  Shrimp, Cows, Facts

  Source: therumpus.net

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• When the war started, religion and superstition (whatever the difference is) permeated the lives of ordinary soldiers, who lived in a thought world not too far removed from the seventeenth century.

  Philip Jenkins

  War, Differences, Soldier

  Interview with Scott McKnight, www.patheos.com. January 23, 2016.

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• A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.

  H. L. Mencken

  Depressing, Prayer, Dark

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.13, Knopf

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• Nationalism must now be added to the refuse pile of superstitions. We are now citizens of the world, and the man who divides the race into elect Irishmen and reprobate foreign devils (especially Englishmen) had better live on the Blaskets where he can admire himself without disturbance.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Race, Devil

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• [The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

  Edward Gibbon

  Philosophy, Light, Mind

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.560, Modern Library

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• Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replace normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.

  Albert Camus

  Religious, Practice, People

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• 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

  Jealous, Purpose, Noble

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• [In] the post-Enlightenment world, science [has] taken the place of magic, miracles, and superstition.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Taken, Miracle, Magic

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• Surely no other American institution is so bound around and tightened up by rules, strictures, adages, and superstitions as the Broadway theatre.

  James Thurber

  Broadway Theatre, Theater, Institutions

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• In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

  Carl Sagan

  Kindness, Fear, Real

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.298, Ballantine Books

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• The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

  H. L. Mencken

  Catholic, Littles, Belief

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• The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Charm

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• Clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Feel Good, Darkness, Crystals

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• The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition.

  George Carlin

  Religious, Ideas, Language

  "Counterculture Comedian George Carlin Dies at 71". www.foxnews.com. June 23, 2008.

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• The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.

  Adam Smith

  Sea, Chinese, Kind

  Adam Smith (1869). “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume 1”, p.372

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• One of my biggest superstitions is to never speak about the future out loud. Lets just say I got a lot out there and I hope to keep on going.

  Steven Blum

  Speak, Loud

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• There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Hypocrisy, Enemy, Never Forget

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1898). “Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc. : Complete”

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• [The Catholic convent] had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul, where ignorance and superstition burnt me with their hell fire in those stifling days.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Ignorance, Fire, Shadow Of Death

  Voltairine de Cleyre (2012). “Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre -- Anarchist, Feminist, Genius”, p.161, SUNY Press

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• Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Order, Denial, Faces

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• I don't believe in superstition, I think it's bad luck.

  Dan Henderson

  Believe, Thinking, Luck

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• 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

  Dream, Intuition, Film

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• I am not given to superstition, yet there are certain places in old Asian countries where human beings have been born and have lived and died for so many generations that the very earth is saturated with their flesh and the air seems crowded with their continuing presence.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Country, Air, Land

  Pearl S. Buck (1954). “My Several Worlds”

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• There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous.

  George MacDonald

  Men, Belief, Prove It

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.507, Delphi Classics

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• Matrimony is always a vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and sanctify it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament.

  St. Jerome

  Religious, Vices, Done

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• In the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Founders made it clear that this was not to be a sky-god nation with a national religion like that of England, from whom we had just separated. It is curious how little understood this amendment is-yes, everyone has a right to worship any god he chooses but he does not have the right to impose his beliefs on others who do not happen to share in his superstitions and taboos.

  Gore Vidal

  Sky, Religion, Doe

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