Quotes & Sayings About Superstitions

Writers don't seem to benefit much by the advance of science, although they thrive on superstitions of all kinds. — Northrop Frye

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations. — George Sarton

In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story - that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM! — Mark Twain

But superstition, like belief, must die ... — Philip Larkin

If decorum allowed, she would take tea at the hotel. Once inside, she might run into a rich northern gentleman who had ridden in this very coach. If only she could touch something colored blue for luck before entering the building! "Touch blue and your wish will come true." That, along with the rabbit's foot she always carried in her pocket, would almost ensure such a meeting. — Karen Cecil Smith

I think superstition has a lot to do with fear: the less, the better. — Penelope Cruz

Do not confuse McGuinty's belief system with a true faith. It is a superstition, the tenets of which are capable of being scientifically disproven. — Ezra Levant

If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see. — Sarah Addison Allen

There's no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands. — Diana Gabaldon

Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse; clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind. — Walter Lippmann

Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does. — Gertrude Stein

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past. — Anne Rice

Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship. — Seneca The Younger

One of my biggest superstitions is to never speak about the future out loud. Let's just say I got a lot out there and I hope to keep on going. — Steven Blum

One of the great advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and its origin is as unmistakable. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Christ ... an anarchist who succeeded. That's all. — Andre Malraux

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast. — Isaac Asimov

The greatest American superstition is belief in facts. — Hermann Graf Keyserling

Clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness. — Carl Sagan

There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. — Robert Green Ingersoll

You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things. — G.K. Chesterton

One of the most obtuse superstitions is the superstition of the scientists who say that man can exist without faith. — Leo Tolstoy

Nothing is more irreligious than to persecute the seekers of truth in order to keep up absurdities and superstitions of bygone ages. Nothing is more inhuman than the commission of 'devout cruelty' under the mask of love of God and man. — Kaiten Nukariya

Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition? — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In a way, the futile excuses many people use to cover their superstitions are demolished. They think it is enough to have some sort of religious fervor, however ridiculous, not realizing that true religion must be according to God's will as the perfect measure; that He can never deny Himself and is no mere spirit form to be changed around according to individual preference. — John Calvin

Like ugly Asian babies, valid superstitions don't exist. At best, any perceived effect of a superstition is you merely psyching yourself out. Think of it as an asshole placebo. — Orlando Winters

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being-free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies-and therefore you can find out what religion is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There are Universes begging for Gods, yet he hangs around this one looking for work. — Philip Jose Farmer

We're all entitled to our superstitions. — Tea Obreht

Superstitions and eccentric habits are a Western substitute for actual idols. — Edward T. Welch

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable. — Hypatia

And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor. — Edward Gibbon

(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language ... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness ... In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses. — Theophile Gautier

Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.'
("The Wendigo") — Algernon Blackwood

Basically I say a few prayers before a game and let that direct me, not superstitions. — Brian McBride

How much luckier than all the rest of mankind are the astrologers who, if they tell one truth among a hundred lies, obtain so much credit that even their lies are believed. — Francesco Guicciardini

We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don — Baruch Spinoza

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. — Carl Sagan

I have been around long enough to discount most superstitions for what they are: I was around when many of them began to take root, after all. But one superstition to which I happen to subscribe is that bad juju comes in threes. The saying in my time was, "Storm clouds are thrice cursed," but I can't talk like that and expect people to believe I'm a twenty-one year-old American. I have to say things like, "Shit happens, man. — Kevin Hearne

Humanists were people who wanted to return to ideas found in old Greek and Latin writing of Greece and Rome, written many centuries earlier. Christian Humanists also wanted to get back to these ideas, but they were mainly concerned with learning about the early Christian Church, before it had become involved with money-making and superstition. They wanted to read the books of the early Church, especially the gospels of Christ, in the original language of Greek, so that they would know exactly what the writings meant. The leader of the Christian Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who attacked superstitions in the Catholic Church in his writing. — Michael A. Mullett

How surprisingly alive false ideas are! They even have their own evolution. At first they are highfalutin' 'truths,' then humdrum 'laws,' and finally superstitions. — Nina Berberova

Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition. — Archibald Alexander Hodge

Devils?" he said, his mind finding its train of thought as his hand found his cigarette lighter. "Devils are superstitions. Products of small minds and even smaller imaginations. There's one word that should be banned from the dictionary - devils. Ha! Now there's a flippant word. — Jason Mott

Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it. — CrimethInc.

Superstitions add texture to life. — Ilona Andrews

Let us pray for wisdom not for superstitions. — Debasish Mridha

Well in those parts (upcountry India) they have were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our discarded practices; it doesn't seem respectful to our mental and moral position. — Saki

Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. — Charles Spurgeon

I don't think it's illegal. I don't think it's against the rules. It's as dangerous for me to have a toothpick in your mouth as it is to have a 200-pound man punch me in the face hard or try to kick me in the face. I'm more worried about that, to be honest. I don't have any superstitions. I won world titles with a toothpick. I defended it without a toothpick. It all depends. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. It's a bad habit. I know I shouldn't do it, but it's fine. — Benson Henderson

The superstition in which we grew up, Though we may recognize it, does not lose Its power over us.-Not all are free Who make mock of their chains. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The feeling of the supremacy of general over particular, of law over fact, of theory over personal experience, took root in my mind at an early age and gained increasing strength as the years advanced. It was the town that played the major role in shaping this feeling, a feeling which later became the basis for a philosophic outlook on life. When I heard boys who were studying physics and natural history repeat the superstitious notions about "unlucky" Monday, or about meeting a priest crossing the road, I was utterly indignant. I felt that my intelligence had been insulted, and I was on the verge of doing any mad thing to make them abandon their shameless superstitions. — Leon Trotsky

To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism. — Thomas Merton

Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge. — Gore Vidal

Because I believe that deep down in woman's nature lies slumbering the spirit of revolt.
Because I believe that woman is enslaved by the world machine, by sex conventions, by motherhood and its present necessary child-rearing, by wage-slavery, by middle-class morality, by customs, laws and superstitions.
Because I believe that woman's freedom depends upon awakening that spirit of revolt within her against these things which enslave her.
Because I believe that these things which enslave woman must be fought openly, fearlessly, consciously. — Margaret Sanger

God is true. The universe is a dream. Blessed am I that I know this moment that I have been and shall be free all eternity; ... that I know that I am worshiping only myself; that no nature, no delusion, had any hold on me. Vanish nature from me, vanish these gods; vanish worship; ... vanish superstitions, for I know myself. I am the Infinite. All these - Mrs. So-and-so, Mr. So-and-so, responsibility, happiness, misery - have vanished. I am the Infinite. How can there be death for me, or birth? Whom shall I fear? I am the One. Shall I be afraid of myself? Who is to be afraid of whom? ... — Swami Vivekananda

When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it. — Mark Twain

James Brown hid everything, and in the game of instant information he lost big-time, because the information machine turns a truth into a lie and a lie into the truth, transforms superstitions and stereotypes into fact with such ease and fluidity that after a while you get to believing as I do, that the media is not a reflection of the American culture but rather is teaching it. As long as James Brown was selling records he let that craziness run. He didn't care. The media worked in his favor and helped fuel his success. But it killed his public reputation and once the success was gone once the head disappeared, the body followed. — James McBride

The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots. — H.L. Mencken

You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect ... The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film ... I've been trying to get there from the beginning. I'm somebody who doesn't know, somebody who's searching. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Excessive attention to the minutiae of astrology is one of the superstitions which has hurt the Hindus very much. — Swami Vivekananda

Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest has failed. — G.K. Chesterton

So strong is the power of superstition that even though we know that we have been reverencing a sham, yet still we hesitate to admit the validity of our new-found convictions. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

We put God in front of terrifying things, and we knocked three times, and we took drugs and shopped too much and obsessed about success, so that the scary stuff would look farther away than it was. We worried, because maybe if we worried enough, it would act like a spell of safety. All those things, superstitions and addictions and anxiety, they were all about hiding from what scared the shit out of us. — Deb Caletti

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available. — Benjamin Haydon

That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with 'and' is a faintly lingering superstition. The OED gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th c.; the Bible is full of them. — Ernest Gowers

the worry habit is reinforcing in the same sense that superstitions are. Since people worry about many things that have a very low probability of actually occurring - a loved one dying in a plane crash, going bankrupt, and the like - there is, to the primitive limbic brain at least, something magical about it. Like an amulet that wards off some anticipated evil, the worry psychologically gets the credit for preventing the danger it obsesses about. The — Daniel Goleman

Somewhere I'd heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons. — Roman Payne

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it. — V.S. Pritchett

Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face. — Murray Gell-Mann

A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel. — George Eliot

If a God tends to reinforce the prejudices in a society instead of diminishing them from the society, then such God is worse than Cancer. — Abhijit Naskar

Once you've written a good script, it will get made or not get made, according to variables you cannot control, like stars getting interested, and the superstitions in Hollywood rising or falling around what is over and done with versus what's in. — Jon Spaihts

When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.) — William Carey

HAN Ha, ha! Thy errant systems of belief - Thy weapons ancient, all thy mysteries, Thy robes and meditations o'er the air, Thy superstitions, e'en thy precious Force - Cannot compare to my religion true: A trusty blaster ever by my side. With thus I say my prayers and guard my soul. — Ian Doescher

Do you know that when one who has influence with youth- be he teacher, leader or parent- seriously weakens the foundations upon which a young person has built, by faith-destroying challenges the youngster is not yet equipped to meet, he fashions a disciple who has been effectively cut loose from fundamentals at a time when he needs most to rely on them? The challenger may himself be a moral, educated, well-meaning person of integrity, doing what he does in the name of honesty and truth. His own character may have been formed in an atmosphere of faith and conviction which, through his influence, he may now help to destroy in his young follower. "Disenchanted" himself in his mature years, he turns his powers on an immature mind and leaves it ready prey for nostrums and superstitions and behavior he himself would disdain. — Marion D. Hanks

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

I didn't know how to define it
hermetic skepticism? liturgical cynicism?
this higher disbelief that led him to acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he scorned. — Umberto Eco

We have fought long and hard to escape from medieval superstition. I, for one, do not wish to go back. — James Randi

Before [Hindus and Moslems] dare think of freedom, they must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another's religion, even prejudices and superstitions, and to trust one another. This requires faith in oneself. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism. — Baron D'Holbach

Fear has always been a diminisher of life. Whether bred in the bogs of superstition or clothed in the brocades of dogma and ritual, the specter of death has reduced the living to supplicants, powerless. — Marya Mannes

Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it. — Andre Malraux

There is a power under your control that is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire. — Andrew Carnegie

Woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong overcome the superstitions that still engulf women. — Emma Goldman

Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition. — Paul Kenneth Keller

Kovacs to a female believer in New Revelation: ..I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crapshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it's soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you'll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we've won for ourselves to come back and try again. You'll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you'll condemn her to the same fucking thing — Richard K. Morgan

He wished me luk. I hope I have luk. I got my rabits foot and my luky penny and my horshoe. Dr Strauss said dont be so superstishus Charlie. This is sience. I dont know what sience is but they all keep saying it so maybe its something that helps you have good luk. — Daniel Keyes

Superstition is the spleen of the soul. — Alexander Pope

Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you, remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

A little superstition is a good thing to keep in one's bag of precautions. — Gertrude Atherton

Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn
Of lucre and ambition, and the truth
With superstitions and traditions taint,
Left only in those written records pure,
Thought not but by the spirit understood. — John Milton

To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination. — George Bernard Shaw

People think I must have all these superstitions, but I don't. I use my batting gloves 'til they wear out. I broke four or five bats during the streak, and I didn't cry over any of them. — Jimmy Rollins

A curious superstition. This is the belief that, if there be introspection at all, it must give exhaustive and infallible information. — C. D. Broad

If anyone decided to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to give liquor its right name, so be it; and let him dub the round world "Mother of the Gods" so long as he is careful not really to infest his mind with base superstitions. — Lucretius