Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Theology is an incubus that a humanist can never shake off. He may seek refuge from theism in atheism or from animism in materialism. But after each desperate twist and turn he will find himself committed to some theological position or other. Theology is inescapable, and it is dynamite.

Atheism | Materialism | Position | Theology | Will |

Denis Diderot

I maintain that superstition is more hurtful to God than atheism is.

Atheism | God | Superstition | God |

Francis Bacon

It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.

Better | God | Opinion | Superstition | Unbelief | God |

Francis Bacon

Superstition is the Reproach of the Deity... The Master of superstition is the People; and in all Superstition, Wise Men follow Fooles... There is a Superstition in avoiding Superstition.

Men | People | Superstition | Wise |

Francis Bacon

In all superstition wise men follow fools.

Men | Superstition | Wise |

Francis Bacon

The mind is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.

Mind | Nature | Superstition |

George Bernard Shaw

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

Superstition |

George Herbert

The Devil divides the word between Atheism and Superstition.

Atheism | Devil | Superstition |

George Santayana

This religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning.

Order | Religion | Superstition | Wisdom |

Joseph Addison

To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

Atheism | Faith | Receive | Truths |

Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

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

Hypocrisy | Men | Public | Success | Superstition |

Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

Religions are born and may die, but superstition is immortal.

Superstition |

Wilhelm Stekel

Fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion.

Atheism | Religion |

Duane Elgin

Is the universe dead or alive at it's foundation? This is a powerful question. Be prepared for strong points of view; people often have an immediate response. Some people view the universe as non-living at the foundations, see space as empty, matter as inert, and believe that we as living creatures have evolved from empty space and inert matter. “It is nothing more than fantasy and superstition to think the whole universe is alive.” Other people respond instantly, saying, “Of course it's alive, how could you think otherwise? It is incomprehensible that the experiences of awe evoked by the universe could arise unless the universe around us is alive

Awe | Nothing | People | Question | Space | Superstition | Universe | Think |

Edmund (Louis Antoine Huot) de Goncourt (1822-1896) and Jules (Alfred Huot) de Goncourt

If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.

Atheism | Insult | Insult |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

I shall quite briefly mention here the notorious atheism of science. The theists reproach it for this again and again. Unjustly. A personal God can not be encountered in a world picture that becomes accessible only at the price that everything personal is excluded from it... We know that whenever God is experienced, it is an experience exactly as real as a direct sense impression, as real as one’s own personality. As such He must be missing from the space-time picture. ‘I do not meet with God in space and time’, so says the honest scientific thinker, and for that reason he is reproached by those in whose catechism it is nevertheless stated: ‘God is Spirit’.

Atheism | Experience | God | Price | Reason | Sense | Space | World | God |

George Iles

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

Superstition |

Herman Wouk

Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and the fearful...Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple--though it is that too, much to its glory--it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first-class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way....speaking of crutches--Freud can be a crutch, Marx can be a crutch, rationalism can be a crutch, and atheism can be two canes and a pair of iron braces. We none of us have all the answers, nor are we likely to have. But in the country of the halt, the man who is surest he has no limp may be the worst-crippled.

Atheism | Belief | Comfort | God | Man | People | Position | God |