Great Throughts Treasury

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

Superstition

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

"Superstition is but the fear of belief, religion is the confidence and trust. The greatest burden in the world is superstition, not only of ceremonies in the church, but of imaginary and scarecrow sins at home." - John Milton

"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 some 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 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

"Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable." - Joseph Joubert

"Religion is not removed by removing superstition." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"Superstition consists in a senseless fear of the gods, religion in the pious worship of them." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"There is in superstition a senseless fear of God." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

"The world is fettered by the chain forged by superstition and ignorance." -

"The birth of science was the death of superstition." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"There is no morality in superstition, it exists not in ceremonies, and has nothing to do with dogmas… Morality is the same among all men who make use of their reason. Morality proceeds from God, like light; our superstitions are only darkness." -

"Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy extinguishes them." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Religions are born and may die, but superstition is immortal." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies rejuvenated." - Baron d’Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, born Paul Heinrich Dietrich

"How blest would our age be if it could witness a religion freed from all the trammels of superstition!" -

"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" - Duane Elgin

"A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time." - George Iles

"The greatest American superstition is a belief in facts." - Hermann Keyserling, fully Hermann Alexander Graf Keyserling

"Science keeps down the weed of superstition not by logic, but by rendering the mental soil unfit for its cultivation." - John Tyndall

"The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be." - Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, fully Arthur James Balfour, aka Lord Balfour

"Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is. on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker

"Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible. " - Mark Hopkins

"Religion and science wage together an incessantly continuing, never slackening fight against skepticism and dogmatism, against disbelief (Unglaube) and superstition (Aberglaube) and the guiding slogan in this fight is from times immemorial and into the whole future: Up to God! (Hin zu Gott)" - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

"Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were it not for the persistence of the superstition that human beings habitually think. There is no more persistent superstition than this." - Nicholas Murray Butler

"Refuse to be bound by karma; it is an old superstition of the ignorant to believe you cannot change your destiny." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Pure religion may generally be measured by the cheerfulness of its professors, and superstition by the gloom of its victims." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"The sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind is, to find, in everything, those certain bounds, quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum. These boundaries are marked out by a very fine line, which only good sense and attention can discover; it is much too fine for vulgar eyes. In manners, this line is good breeding; beyond it, is troublesome ceremony; short of it, is unbecoming negligence and inattention. In morals, it divides ostentatious Puritanism from criminal relaxation; in religion, superstition from impiety; and, in short, every virtue from its kindred vice or weakness." - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter. ['Why are people?'] We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems; Is there meaning to life? What are we for? What is Man?" - Richard Dawkins

"We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?" - Richard Dawkins

"Wielding his sword of reason in one hand and shield of acerbic scepticism in the other, Professor Richard Dawkins rides out against the forces of faith, superstition and New Age nonsense. It's hardly a fair fight, Dawkins easily destroys the arguments of astrologers, dowsers and the tricks behind the trade of mediumship. His manner may be off-putting but Dawkins' message is clear " - Richard Dawkins

"In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal and laborious, treating his servants with a benevolence then accounted contemptible, and working out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and thoroughness. When he was offered the richer Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here, as he said of himself, though he was 'the compulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!" - S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall

"The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war." - Sydney J. Harris

"And here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"We do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn't seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends into further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past […]. I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma." - Stephan Jay Gould

"I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another." - Thomas Jefferson

"May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion." - Thomas Jefferson

"Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak." - Thomas Jefferson

"In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture from a very different direction: the attack on Darwinism mounted in recent years from a religious perspective by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair." - Thomas Nagel

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required." - Thomas Paine

"Almost every house had a lonely and deserted look; for it was known that one or more beloved beings had gone out of it to the grave. A dark, heartless spirit was abroad. The whole land, in fact, mourned and nothing on which the eye could rest bore a green or thriving look or any symptom of activity, but the Churchyards, and here the digging and the delving were incessant - at the early twilight, during the gloomy noon, the dreary dusk, and the still more funereal-looking light of the midnight taper." - William Carleton

"There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"The sublime rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid." - Hugh Blair

"There is at present in the world a cold reserve that keeps man at a distance from man. There is an art in the practice of which individuals communicate forever, without anyone telling his neighbor what estimate he forms of his attainments and character, how they ought to be employed, and how to be improved. There is a sort of domestic tactics, the object of which is to elude curiosity, and keep up the tenor of conversation, without the disclosure either of our feelings or opinions. The friend of justice will have no object more deeply at heart than the annihilation of this duplicity. The man whose heart overflows with kindness for his species will habituate himself to consider, in each successive occasion of social intercourse, how that occasion may be most beneficently improved. Among the topics to which he will be anxious to awaken attention, politics will occupy a principal share." - William Godwin

"I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be — that proves I love him better than myself." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power." - Emma Goldman