Superstition Quotes
Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every convention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in their eyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purely natural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man of talent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in the individual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much as feeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man is not mockable, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, nor esteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others to respect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is the result of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
Henri-Frdric Amiel
The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition.
Jerry Coyne
Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
Thomas Fuller
We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.
Voltaire
Science that abdicates its cultural values risks being perceived as an extension of technology, an instrument in the hands of political or economic power. Humanity that disavows science risks falling into the hands of superstition.
Nicola Cabibbo
We discover in the gospels, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication
Thomas Jefferson
Fanaticism is the child of false zeal and superstition, the father of intolerance and persecution.
Fletcher, Samuel
Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone, extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic, whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying or scribbling, never a gentleman.
Benjamin Disraeli
The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
Cyril Connolly
According to superstition, empty egg-shells should always be broken up -- lest witches make boats thereof.
Dorothy Hartley
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
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.
Martin Luther
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
