Superstition Quotes
157 quotes
"Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!"
"We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise."
"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe"
"We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language."
"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act."
"Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition."
"If superstition could contradict science, the world may as well be on the back of a turtle. But giving into turtle worship was a bridge too far."
"The greatest impact of the Darwinian revolution...was that it completed the liberation from superstition and fear that began in the physical sciences a few centuries before. Man, too, is a natural phenomenon. [in "The evolutionary concept of man", 1972, p. 35.]"
"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, or the Evening Redness in the West
"When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'."
"The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not."
"The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters."
"Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools."
"The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy."
"I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes."
"I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm."
"The best way to avoid a catastrophic conflict of beliefs is to be more compassionate about other people’s beliefs as long as they do not advocate for prejudices, bigotry and sectarianism."
"Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement."
"There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible, and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method'."
"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 replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions."
"The problem is that one man's superstition is another man's religion, and vice versa. Many Protestants today still see Catholicism as being rife with superstition, ... while atheists and agnostics would see bien-pensant Protestants as worshiping an equally absurd form of the supernatural."
"[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds."
"A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul."
"Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts."
"There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near."
J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Haunted Baronet And Others: Ghost Stories 1861-70
"You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms."
"If education were the same as information, the encyclopedias would be the greatest sages in the world."
"The point is, education in its truest form, is the foundation of all human endeavors. It is the most noble of all the civilized elements of human consciousness. Education enables the humans to achieve their fullest mental and physical potential in both personal and social life. The ability of being educated is what distinguishes humans from animals. You can teach a cockatoo to repeat a bunch of vocabularies, but you cannot teach it to construct a space shuttle and go to the moon."
"Instead of being like a circus where the trainer uses his stick to make animals do stunts to serve the interest of the audience, the system of education should be like an Orchestra where the conductor waves his stick to orchestrate the music already within the musicians’ heart in the most beautiful manner. The teacher should be like the conductor in the orchestra, not the trainer in the circus."
"This is not education my friend. It is a process of manufacturing computation devices that look like Homo sapiens, and thereby falsely labeled as Education."
"Education enables the humans to achieve their fullest mental and physical potential in both personal and social life."
"All systems of the society should serve the mind, instead of the mind serving the systems."
"Mind is the Alpha – Mind is the Omega. There is nothing else in the pursuit of knowledge. And more importantly, there is nothing else in education. All systems of the society should serve the mind, instead of the mind serving the systems."
"Education means nourishing the mind and make it develop in order to see beyond the limitations of current social perception - it means breaking the barriers of the rugged sociological system that impede in the progress of human civilization - it means trying out new things for the first time in human history and succeeding in a few while failing in some. And that is how a species grows to become more advanced."
"For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue."
"It isn't a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state's goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government's propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They'll fasten the chains to their own ankles."
"It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest cal"
"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astounding universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy."
"It is all about the trade of ignorance. And India is such a bronze-age nation that is filled with these trades (astrology, palm reading, vastushashtra and others)."
"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."
"The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it."
"Rise of Science DenialismThe problem is, in a world where some people (even in the USA, where someone like Donald Trump was allowed to rise to the level of a serious presidential candidate in 2016) have descended to such levels of ignorance that science itself is dismissed by leaders, political and religious as ‘an agenda’, and frightening numbers of people cling to ignorance and superstition because it suits their conservative anti-human rights views and objectives."
"I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers. I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be "authority", and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders. I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in "authority"."
"When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence. They can't ever be voted out of existence."
"Dear Anarcho-Communist,If you and I ever find ourselves in a stateless society, have no fear. Just mention that you are a communist, and I promise I will never try to "oppress" and "exploit" you by offering to trade with you, or by offering to pay you to do work.Sincerely,Larken Rose"
"Some people wouldn’t still be sane, if they were not religious or superstitious; some wouldn’t be disabled or dead."
"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."
"One way or another, all humans are superstitious."
"Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the reli"
"Deep scientific psychoanalysis reveals that excessive beliefs and dependence on religion is a superstition and fear induced psychiatric disease."
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