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Superstition Quotes

Browse 331 quotes about Superstition.

Superstition Quotes

“Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. "I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left." In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.”

WarHumorInspirationFunnyHopePrayerMeditationRationalSuperstitionAwesomeYossarianBolognaCatch 22
Book:Catch-22
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“Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised upon the apex of a never-extinct volcano of poor and oppressed barbarism, superstition and ignorance. Modernity is a cap superimposed upon the Middle Ages, which always remain.”

ScienceReligionHistoryMagicIgnoranceCivilizationMiddle AgesModernitySuperstitionBarbarism
Author:Will Durant
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“The people once knew it by many titles. They saw it when the malformed crawled out of their mother’s wombs. When the ravens flew into the windows. When the cows could not produce milk and when the diseases spread. Its face had always been there. During the pestilence of the Black Plague, and its presence felt in the beds of the sweating sickness. Among the frightened royalty of the species, it appeared in their bed covers as they gasped their final moments covered in pustules and sores.”

DeathHorrorPossessionSupernaturalPlagueSuperstitionDemonicMisanthropy
Book:Storms In the Distant North
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“Catholic gossip and folklore, as one might term it, contributed to this demonizing legend around the conflict with the Protestants. At Geila in Brabant it was reported that the demons suddenly left all the possessed people, so that they could attend Luther's funeral[...] At St. Medard's Church in Paris the Calvinist iconoclasts allegedly broke all the winfows except that 'in gratitude' they left one which showed a red devil. In several other places, including St. Paul's in London, iconoclastic mobs left only depictions of devils untouched.”

HumorSuperstitionReformationDemonologyCounter ReformationEarly Modern
Book:ENCHANTED EUROPE:SUPERSTITION, REASON & RELIGION 1250-1750 PAPER: Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250-1750
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“If the bible comes and peddles phobia, I'll burn such bible to ashes. If the koran comes and peddles violence, I'll tear up such koran to pieces. If the vedas come and peddle superstition, I'll crush such filth to pulp with my foot. If the constitution comes and peddles war, As concerned parent I'll grab their makers, And spank out all their dormant good. Even if some two-bit God comes, And peddles division, I'll divide him so many times, Even to his apostles, He'll bear no recognition. And a little word of advise to those, Priming their guns, swords and tridents. When a volcano erupts, Insects are supposed to run, Not hide behind bows, arrows and bibles. Brain is mightier than bullets, Heart is mightier than the homunculus. When a 3 pound brain falls on bigoted bugs, There is no running, only burning to cinders.”

DiscriminationSecularismSuperstitionReligious HarmonySocial ReformerReligious FundamentalismBrain PowerReligious TolerationSocial Justice PoemHuman Rights Poetry
Book:Amor Apocalypse: Canım Sana İhtiyacım
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“Kyle took in a breath. “While you were doing freaky stuff with Adam—as fine as he is—did you figure out where he is?” I shook my head, and he sighed. “That’s good.” I raised my eyebrow. He grinned, tiredly. “That would have been useful, Mercy. And having something freaky and useful would have been too good and sent the spirits of evil gods on our tail.” I stared at him.”

HumorSuperstitionMercy ThompsonAdam HauptmanFrost BurnedMercedes ThompsonPatricia BriggsKyle Brooks
Author:Patricia Briggs
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“You can make a successful run for political office in this country without an especially thick résumé, any exceptional talent for expressing yourself, a noteworthy education or, for that matter, a basic grasp of science. But you better have religion. You better be ready to profess your faith in and fealty to God — the Judeo-Christian one, of course. And you better be convincing. A dust-up last week in the 2014 race for a United States Senate seat from Arkansas provided a sad reminder of this, showing once again that our ballyhooed separation of church and state is less canyon than itty-bitty crack.”

GodChristianAmericaScienceReligionFaithPoliticsUnited StatesFirst AmendmentSuperstitionSeparation Of Church And StateArkansasBibile
Author:Frank Bruni
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“The ease with which certain words come to be musused is truly extraordinary: there are some who have gone so far as to give the name 'traditions' to popular habits, or even to conventions of quite recent origin, withouth importnace or real significance. As for ourselves, we refuse to give this name to what is only a more or less automatic respect for certain outward forms, which are sometimes nothing more than 'superstitions' in the etymological sense of the word. True tradition dewells in the outlook of a people or race or civilization, and it springs from causes that lie far deeper.”

TraditionHabitsSuperstitionTraditional ValuesTraditionalism
Book:EAST AND WEST
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“The American people spend thousands of dollars to propagate the doctrines of the fall of man, the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by a personal God, vicarious atonement, absolution from sin by the shedding of innocent blood. This is the Christianity offered to the poor and illiterate of India... Christianity has percolated through the layers of dogmatism and bigotry, of intolerance and superstition, of damnation and hell fire. It takes on itself the quality of these layers and imparts them to those that are received within its folds.”

PoorChristianityCreationIndiaBigotryIntoleranceSuperstitionGenesisAmericanDamnationIlliterateDogmatismFall Of ManThe FallJainismHellfireInnocent BloodPersonal GodSix Day CreationVicarious Atonement
Book:The Monist
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“Curse of Spirituality (Sonnet 2537) Why is it that 90% of modern spiritual population are just newage nutters, what's the point in surpassing religious fundamentalism, if you end up being sucked into superstitions with glitter! Why can't you be spiritual without being superstitious, why can't you be religious without being a fundamentalist - the day you could, that's the beginning of civilized spirituality and human religion. I'm not asking for cold, cantankerous logic all the time, all I'm saying is, why does spirituality have to depend on superstition - if your spirituality crumbles without superstition, you were never spiritual, just underdeveloped. There is no spirituality except kindness, there is no religion but service.”

SpiritualSpiritualityService Of HumanityScience And ReligionSuperstitionRational ThinkingSelfless ServiceSuperstitiousPseudoscienceNew Age Movement
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“If some prehistoric baboons with two brain cells could normalize blind faith as divinity, then a human being with a hundred billion nerve cells, could cast aside such blindness and redo divinity from ground up, and this time, not as a coping mechanism against the unknown, but as enhancement of our humanity.”

SpiritualityDivinePrejudiceTheologyDivinityBigotryFundamentalismSuperstitionBlind FaithNeurotheology
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“The ineffable nuances and numinous intricacies of the supernatural do not adhere to natural laws, nor to materialist superstitions. It will thus forever remain beyond the scope of Newtonian science and the narrow mind.”

MysticalSupernaturalSuperstitionOccultEsotericNatural LawsPsychic PhenomenaParanormal PhenomenaMaterialist ScienceNewtonian Science
Book:The Sensible Psychic: A Leading-Edge Guide To True Psychic Perception
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“There's nothing uglier than an ugly mouth, there's nothing filthier than a filthy heart. I have said many a times - extreme logic ruins the sweetness of life, just like extreme of faith ruins all common sense, and facilitates superstition. That's why you gotta be grown up enough to practice the human balance between logic and fiction, even if it means attracting mockery from militant atheists as well as religious fundamentalists.”

SpiritualityToleranceHolinessBigotryHumanistFundamentalismSecularismSuperstitionHumanistic PsychologyMilitant Atheism
Book:Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One
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“This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.”

ReasonReligionChristianityEvolutionBibleMythSuperstitionDarwinCharles Darwin
Book:Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll: Including His Letters On the Chinese God--Is Suicide a Sin?--The Right to One's Life--Etc. Etc. Etc, Volume 2
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“Social development is quite like memory consolidation in the human brain. Important memories meticulously get imprinted from old dying neurons to newly born neurons and unimportant memories fade away while making way for new memories to flourish. Such should be the course of societal progress.”

RevolutionBrainy QuotesSocial ChangeOrthodoxySuperstitionReformerSocial DevelopmentSocial ReformRigidityTraditions
Book:Mucize Insan: When The World is Family
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“We are the explorers of impossibility - we decide what is possible, not some tradition, constitution or factualization - not tradition, because traditions are habits of the past, and as such, are unqualified to dictate life of the present - not constitution, because that too is born of the past, and as such can never be taken as gospel - and not factualization, because a world run by facts alone may be suitable for the existence of cold, mechanical computers, but not warm and vulnerable human beings.”

RevolutionSocial JusticeFundamentalismSuperstitionReformerSocial StudiesSocial ReformIntellectualismNation BuildingTorchbearer
Book:Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live
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“Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment")”

ScotlandSupernaturalSuperstitionScottishScotsScotsman
Book:Reign of Terror: Great Victorian Horror Stories
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