Superstition Quotes

Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.

Mark Hopkins



Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Pope John Paul II



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

Adam Smith



Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller



Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science.

Hal Clement



Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?

Judith Viorst



Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.

Countess of Blessington



Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

Joseph Joubert



Superstition is the poetry of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Superstition is the poison of the mind.

Joseph Lewis



Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Edmund Burke



Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Voltaire



Superstition? Who can define the boundary line between the superstition of yesterday and the scientific fact of tomorrow?

Garrett Fort



There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.

Rod Serling



They that are against superstition often times run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.

John Selden



This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

Polly Toynbee



This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice.

Adam Weishaupt



Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.

Thomas Fuller



To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.

William Ralph Inge



When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

Denis Diderot



You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them.

Curt Siodmak



Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

Henry James



The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

George Herbert



The left sees nothing but bigotry and superstition in the popular defense of the family or in popular attitudes regarding abortion, crime, busing, and the school curriculum.

Christopher Lasch



The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.

Robert Bork



The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton



The nations were awakened from the sleep of death, as the words of eternal life flowed from the Apostles' lips, - the temples of superstition were shut or destroyed, and churches were planted in every part of the civilized world.

John Strachan



The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

Elbert Hubbard



The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Francis Bacon



A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

Jose Bergamin



A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.

George Bernard Shaw



A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.

Johan Huizinga



Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural.

Theophrastus



Although I myself don't go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it's superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

Barbara Walters



Conscience without judgment is superstition.

Benjamin Whichcote



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

Bertrand Russell



Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

Isaac Asimov



I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

Babe Ruth



I have a superstition about saying too much about what I want to happen, just in case it all disappears, or someone else comes along and beats me to it.

Gil Gerard



I have only one superstition... Touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

George Herman



I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

Anne Tyler



I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!

Joanna Trollope



If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven. What many people call sin is not sin; I do many things to break down superstition, and I will break it down.

Joseph Smith, Jr.



Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

James F. Cooper



In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway.

Tucker Carlson



It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

Voltaire



Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish.

Adam Weishaupt



Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

John Calvin



My only feeling about superstition is that it's unlucky to be behind at the end of the game.

Duffy Daugherty

Household Superstitions by Joseph Addison

  Visions and magic spells, can you despise, And laugh at witches, ghosts, and prodigies? Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintanc...