Quotessence
Home / Topics / Superstition Quotes

Superstition Quotes

Browse 331 quotes about Superstition.

Superstition Quotes

“Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: 'But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)'; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders. ...All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in 'Al- Mughni,' Imam al-Kisa'i in 'Al-Bada'i,' al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: 'As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life.' On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.' ...We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. ...Almighty Allah also says: 'O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things.' Almighty Allah also says: 'So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith.' [World Islamic Front Statement, 23 February 1998]”

DutyCivilizationDevilIslamTerrorismSatanAlmightyMuslimSuperstitionAmericanAmericansAllahMeccaMuslimsThe DevilFatwa
Author:Osama bin Laden
Create image

“Looking at Great-Great Grandpa Baldwin's photograph, I think to myself: You've finally done it. It took four generations, but you've finally goddamned done it. Gotten that war against reason and uppity secularists you always wanted. Gotten even for the Scopes trial, which they say was one of many burrs under your saddle until your last breath. Well, rejoice, old man, because your tribes have gathered around America's oldest magical hairball of ignorance and superstition, Christian fundamentalism, and their numbers have enabled them to suck so much oxygen out of the political atmosphere that they are now acknowledged as a mainstream force in politics. Episcopalians, Jews, and affluent suburban Methodists and Catholics, they are all now scratching their heads, sweating, and swearing loudly that this pack of lower-class zealots cannot possibly represent the mainstream--not the mainstream they learned about in their fancy sociology classes or were so comfortably reassured about by media commentators who were people like themselves. Goodnight, Grandpa Baldwin. I'll toast you from hell.”

ChristianReligionPoliticsBeliefIgnoranceSecularFundamentalismExtremismSuperstition
Book:Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Create image

“Progress had not invaded, science had not enlightened, the little hamlet of Pieuvrot, in Brittany. They were a simple, ignorant, superstitious set who lived there, and the luxuries of civilization were known to them as little as its learning. They toiled hard all the week on the ungrateful soil that yielded them but a bare subsistence in return; they went regularly to mass in the little rock-set chapel on Sundays and saint’s days; believed implicitly all that monsieur le cure said to them, and many things which he did not say; and they took all the unknown, not as magnificent but as diabolical”

ReligionIgnoranceSuperstitionUnknown
Author:Eliza Lynn Linton
Create image

“What kind of a moron demands his devotee to slaughter his son just to prove his loyalty! What kind of an alcoholic father sends his son to be tortured and nailed on a cross just to prove how much he cares! What kind of a pervert rescues his wife from her abductor only to abandon her, just so his reputation as the ideal king wouldn't be tarnished by a violated woman! Mythologies have nothing to do with holiness, nor with the actual creator of the cosmos, even if there is such a thing, at most they reflect the mindset and morality of their time.”

ReligionMythMythologyTheologyDogmaFundamentalismScience And ReligionSuperstitionDogmatismPsychology Of Religion
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
Create image

“Dogma not Divine, Myth not Holy (Sonnet 2430) What kind of a moron demands his devotee to slaughter his son just to prove his loyalty! What kind of an alcoholic father sends his son to be tortured and nailed on a cross just to prove how much he cares! What kind of a pervert rescues his wife from her abductor only to abandon her, just so his reputation as the ideal king wouldn't be tarnished by a violated woman! Mythologies have nothing to do with holiness, nor with the actual creator of the cosmos, even if there is such a thing, at most they reflect the mindset and morality of their time. I never had any interest in making a case for or against god, my struggle is far more real, against dogma disguised as divine.”

ReligionDivineMythologyTheologyDevotionHolinessDogmaScience And ReligionSuperstitionBlind Faith
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
Create image

“A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians. In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence.”

JusticeRiskSocietyMoralityEvidencePossessionHarmChoiceFairnessDrugsSuperstitionRetributionSubjectivityMoral ResponsibilityDeterrentScapegoatingDrunk DrivingSentencingDrug Sentencing
Book:Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
Create image

“It did not fear any god the people constructed from marble and stone. It thrived on demoralizing the frightened prayers of the weak that clung to sanctuary walls. Its intoxication found in the terror, the superstition, and worship that fed its merciless existence. The night sky provided the nocturnal shelter where it walked freely. The festivals of the changing seasons, reminding the mere mortals their time upon its fields were short. Brief in comparison to the thousands of years that it casually passed. It ruled the Earth, long before the human animals learned to conquer shelter and formulate abstract thoughts. In the cave paintings of the most primitive, they feared to paint its imagery on stone.”

HatredPossessionGhostsDemonsSuperstitionFairiesElvesMisanthropyMisanthropic
Book:Storms In the Distant North
Create image

“During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes. Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? (Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 26-27.)”

MagicEvolutionInventionManAccountabilitySuperstitionContradictionsEarly Man
Author:Albert Einstein
Create image

“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.”

SlaverySlaveOppressionPietySuperstitionSlave OwnersRevivals
Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Create image

“Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo.”

PoliticsBeliefPeaceFreedomLibertyDemocracyCapitalismSlaveryTradeProsperityLibertarianSocialismAnarchyIrrationalFreeTaxationTheftTotalitarianismCoercionSuperstitionCollectivismStatismVoluntaryismMarketsLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleEmpireSubjugationAustrian School Of EconomicsFree MarketsSelf OwnershipVoluntaryistUseful IdiotsCommuni
Author:Robert Higgs
Create image

“When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the 'iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,' Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God's wrath at the 'iron points.' In a sermon on the subject he said, 'In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.' Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare.”

GodAmericaReligionChristianityDesignDivineEnglandProvidenceLightningWickednessBostonPietySuperstitionFranklinClergyNew EnglandMassachusettsIdiocyHand Of GodBenjamin FranklinGeorge IiiImpiousLightning Rod
Book:An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity
Create image

“Perhaps our judgement of the purple woman was unfair. No doubt her theories concerning the "approach of the Teatro" made us all uneasy. But was this reason enough to cast her out from that artistic underworld which was the only society available to her? Like many societies, of course, ours was founded on fearful superstition, and this is always reason enough for any kind of behavior. She had been permanently stigmatized by too closely associating herself with something unclean in its essence.”

SocietySuperstitionStigmaOutcastOstracizedOustider
Book:Teatro Grottesco
Create image

“Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk. [Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity]”

PriestsRidiculeSuperstitionTrinityWeaponChristiansAbracadabraThe Trinity
Book:Letters of Thomas Jefferson
Create image

“In Extremis by Stewart Stafford Saturnalia's trumpets sound, The ancestral chorus song, Time's gold web drawn back, For the stocks' denizen throng. Bawdy knights of the feral feast, Daze of snoring stranger sloth, As contagion's banquet guests, Sipping end times' galling broth. Bean found in fortuitous cake, A fool crowned Lord of Misrule, The meek's pantomimed throne, A drone in a queen bee's tulle. Fatted calf, societal scapegoat, Chattels mopping festive vomit, Charon coins on bloodshot eyes, Execution dawn to a dark comet. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”

TraditionSuperstitionRomanFestivalRomansCarnivalWinter SolsticeLord Of MisruleKing For A DaySaturnalia
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“Dharmageddon (Untouchable Sonnet) Bunch of dried up prunes bathing in sewage water to gain instant holiness are no good to me. I want the brave and vigorous of heart and brain, those teeming with life, I want the uncowardly. I want the uncompromising, I want the unbending, I want the pure, who've conquered their prejudice. Only the undoctrinated can carry the godly thunder, only the living can bear remedy to customs of malice. If you're failure as a christian according to the church, you're likely a true christian like Christ. I work the world flooded with living Christs and Buddhas, not dummkopfs obeying the dead and blind. Enough with brainless bowing to holy heap of compost, partake no more of the flea-ridden potion of fanaticism. Abolish all relation with dogma and ritual superstition, sterilized in the pyre of prejudice, Arise Dharmageddon!”

HolinessDivinityDogmaFundamentalismFanaticismSuperstitionFreethinkerIndoctrinationDogmatismReligious Fanatics
Book:Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood
Create image

“Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts. And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings.”

MoralityEthicsTerrorismDelusionGenocideInquirySuperstitionInfanticideUnknowableCop OutUndetectableUntestable
Author:Greta Christina
Create image

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being. - Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann”

ScienceNatureNaturalResearchSuperstitionNaturalismDeterminismMethodological Naturalism
Author:Albert Einstein
Create image

“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")”

NatureWildernessPrimitiveHostileMonstrousSuperstitionMonsterPrimevalPrimeval Man
Book:Monster Mix
Create image

“All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, — all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ's religion has been changed and corrupted. But Christian clergymen are well aware that if they were to attempt to purify Christianity and bring it back to the religion of Christ, the result would be to reform it out of existence. Christianity stands to-day completely explained. Every step in its development is laid bare and shown to be due to purely natural causes, and it is easy to see how much Christianity adopted from other and older religions.”

ReligionJesusChristChristianityJesus ChristCorruptionReformSuperstitionPlagiarismClergymenCopyPurifyJainismNatural CausesPagan Influence
Book:The Monist
Create image

“It is also the irrational instinct of religionism, the vague yearning for something to worship—a reflection or shadow of the true devotional principle—which prompts men to project a subjective image of the lower, personal mind, and to endow it with human attributes, and then to claim to receive "revelations" from it; and this—the image of the Beast, or unspiritual mind,—is their anthropomorphic God, a fabulous monster the worship of which has ever prompted men to fanaticism and persecution, and has inflicted untold misery and dread upon the masses of mankind, as well as physical torture and death in hideous forms upon the many martyrs who have refused to bend the knee to this Gorgonean phantom of the beast-mind of man. Truly, where the worshipers of this image of the Beast predominate, the man whose brow and hand are unbranded by this superstition, who neither thinks nor acts in accordance with it, suffers ostracism if not virulent persecution.”

BeastApocalypseFanaticismSuperstitionIdolatryRevelationSubjugation1910Gorgon13 13 18
Book:The Apocalypse Unsealed
Create image

“In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end. Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent. Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake, supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished.”

SciencePurposeNaturalDesignEvolutionEvidenceAdaptationVariationSuperstitionNatural SelectionIllustrationDarwinCharles DarwinDesign ArgumentWatchmaker Argument
Book:Criticism on "The Origin of Species"
Create image

“But let me say this. I am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing but I must confess it here. And so if some unlucky accident should befall my youngest son, if some police officer should accidentally shoot him, if he should hang himself while in his jail cell, if new witnesses appear to testify to his guilt, my superstition will make me feel that it was the result of the ill will still borne me by some people here. Let me go further. If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning I will blame some of the people here. If his plane show fall into the sea or his ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean, if he should catch a mortal fever, if his automobile should be struck by a train, such is my superstition that I would blame the ill will felt by people here. Gentlemen, that ill will, that bad luck, I could never forgive. But aside from that let me swear by the souls of my grandchildren that I will never break the peace we have made. After all, are we or are we not better men than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless millions of men in our lifetimes?”

SuperstitionVendettaThe GodfatherThe Don
Book:The Godfather
Create image

“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”

ScienceCultureIgnoranceCriticismDelusionSkepticismSuperstitionCredulityPseudoscienceSkeptics
Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Create image