Superstition Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

[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.

You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms.

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.]

When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.

Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

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 callings.

[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]

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.

Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.

Those distinct substances, which concretes generally either afford, or are made up of, may, without very much inconvenience, be called the elements or principles of them.

If a black black cat crosses your path, it suggests that the animal is going somewhere.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

Science . . . has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, except through science.