SUPERSTITION QUOTES II
quotations about superstition
Aaah ... when two Neptunes appear in the sky it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"The Horla"
Religion is not removed by removing superstition.
CICERO
De Divinatione
There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Superstitions are usually born from uncertainty of the future and a lack of control. It is easier to blame problems on an outside force than to deal with them head on.
ANNDREA OURS
"Black cats and superstition", The West Georgian, October 28, 2016
The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
One of the interesting things about superstitions is their seemingly arbitrary nature. Like, why 13? Why black cats? Why can't you walk under that ladder? It has no rational bearing. Yet somehow you feel like you're tempting fate, and the outcome, a bad outcome, that could befall you is going to be worse because you did something that people say you shouldn't do.
TOM GILOVICH
"Why Do You Believe in Superstitions? Here's What the Science Says", Reader's Digest, December 29, 2016
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816
The general root of superstition: namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
FRANCIS BACON
The Collected Works of Francis Bacon
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
For a set of supposedly irrational beliefs, superstitions have a surprisingly large following.
JULIANA LABIANCA
"Why Do You Believe in Superstitions? Here's What the Science Says", Reader's Digest, December 29, 2016
Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Waste Books
Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for, as it addeth deformity to an ape, to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion, makes it the more deformed. And as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt, into a number of petty observances.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
The funny thing about superstitions is that the nonsense ones are perfectly reasonable if they're YOUR superstitions, it's everybody else's that are ridiculous.
FLAVIA BERTOLINI
"Don't do that, it's bad luck! There are a lot of superstitions out there, and some of them are really quite peculiar", Mirror, April 30, 2017
When you believe in things that you don't understand then you suffer? Superstition ain't the way!
STEVIE WONDER
"Superstition", Talking Book
Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.
COLIN WILSON
The Occult: A History
In doing practically only the things which He testifies He cares nothing about, superstition neglects those which He has ordained and said are pleasing to Him or even openly rejects them. Therefore those who (in order to worship God) establish religions which have their source in their own minds, only worship their own dreams.
JOHN CALVIN
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Journal, June 27, 1852
Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.
CARL JUNG
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle