Superstitions Quotes - Page 28

• 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

  Fear, Bogs, Dogma

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• Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does.

  Gertrude Stein

  Believe, Mean, Doe

  Gertrude Stein, Richard Kostelanetz (2002). “The Gertrude Stein Reader: The Great American Pioneer of Avant-garde Letters”, p.88, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

  John Ruskin

  Passion, Sacrifice, Men

  John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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• Religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Religious, Educational, Long

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• The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities of higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear - is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Giving

  Speech before Senate Judiciary Committee, 18 Jan. 1892

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• Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

  Lord Acton

  Giving, Birth, Sometimes

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.296, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In paganism light is mixed with darkness, and religion and truth are blended with superstition and error.

  Lindley Murray

  Errors, Light, Darkness

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• Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Thinking, Safety

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• Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Failure, Luck, Steps

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.340, Penguin

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• My work explores the frontier between rationalism and superstition and the wavering boundary between the two.

  David Almond

  Two, Wavering, Boundaries

  "A hit from a myth" by Kit Spring, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2003.

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• The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  War, Battle, Evolution

  Jerry A. Coyne (2009). “Why Evolution is True”, p.11, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Intuitive seeming is in my view an attraction to assent based on nothing more than understanding of the content that upon consideration attracts one's assent. But such understanding-based attraction can differ dramatically in epistemic quality. Some such attractions represent nothing more than superstition or bias absorbed from the culture, sans ratiocination.

  Ernest Sosa

  Views, Understanding, Quality

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Prejudice, Care, Opinion

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1649, Library of Alexandria

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• The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Success, Men, Hypocrisy

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1920). “Ingersoll: Fifty Great Selections, Lectures, Tributes, After Dinner Speeches and Essays, Carefully Selected from the Twelve Volume Dresden Edition of Colonel Ingersoll's Complete Works”

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• Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence

  George Holyoake

  Atheism, Reason, Existence

  George Jacob Holyoake (1896). “The Origin and Nature of Secularism: Showing that where Freethought Commonly Ends Secularism Begins”

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• If man were relieved of all superstition, and all prejudice, and had replaced these with a keen sensitivity to his real environment, and moreover had achieved a level of communication so simplified that one syllable could express his every thought, then he would have achieved the level of intelligence already achieved by his dog.

  Robert Breault

  Dog, Real, Communication

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• Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Friends, Real, Ignorance

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• For men to focus on controlling women's reproduction to solve a society's problems seems nothing short of mad or, at best, superstitious. But men's superstition or insanity has real and dire consequences for the women who are its object. And states, too, home in on women's bodies, perhaps to create the illusion that men are in control of uncontrollable forces. Indeed, almost all governments try to control women's bodies and regulate their appearance in some way.

  Marilyn French

  Real, Home, Men

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• A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

  Tea Obreht

  Ritual

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• New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture - even the local superstitions. It's a sensory experience on all levels and there's a story lurking around every corner.

  Ruta Sepetys

  New Orleans, Cities, America

  "Ruta Sepetys. Seeker Of Lost Stories". FAQ, rutasepetys.com.

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• Entrepreneurial creation is the generation, de novo, of novelty and surprise- freedom of choice originating in the world of ideas, and imagination beyond all concern with chemicals. The contrary view- that all ideas are determined by material relationships- is the materialist superstition.

  George Gilder

  Views, Ideas, Imagination

  George Gilder (2013). “Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World”, p.92, Regnery Publishing

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• Every apartment devoted to the circulation of the glass, may be regarded as a temple set apart for the performance of human sacrifices. And they ought to be fitted up like the ancient temples in Egypt, in a manner to show the real atrocity of the superstition that is carried on within their walls.

  Thomas Lovell Beddoes

  Wall, Real, Sacrifice

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• Superstition is just fantasy with attitude; it's a way of erroneously trying to control events.

  Joy Browne

  Attitude, Trying, Events

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• A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!

  Ludwig von Mises

  Exercise, Idols, People

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• I cannot say for certain that God does not exist; I think the worst thing that can be said about him is that he's a bit of an underachiever.

  Woody Allen

  Thinking, Doe, Belief

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