Religion Superstition Quotes

#1. Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious; it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious.

Madame De Stael

#2. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Edmund Blake

#3. In paganism light is mixed with darkness, and religion and truth are blended with superstition and error.

Lindley Murray

#4. ... Science... denude(s) all religious beliefs... denigrating them as irrational forms of superstition or myth regardless of their intrinsic rationality or value.

Nicholas Gane

#5. What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. It's not a strictly spiritual affair; it has psychological roles to fulfill. You might not want it to be a religion based on your own experience but that's like wanting to clean up your dreams

Gary Snyder

#6. Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove. It is no surprise that political revolutions, scepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together,

Carl Sagan

#7. From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control.

Mario Bunge

#8. The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#9. Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.

Stefan Molyneux

#10. 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

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

Marguerite Gardiner

#12. Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is, perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific - that is, truthful - must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.

Elbert Hubbard

#13. You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

Dan Barker

#14. What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

Christopher Hitchens

#15. The greatest impact of the Darwinian revolution...was that it completed the liberation from superstition and fear that began in the physical sciences a few centuries before. Man, too, is a natural phenomenon. [in "The evolutionary concept of man", 1972, p. 35.]

George Gaylord Simpson

#16. The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#17. Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.

David Hume

#18. There are none so superstitious as the educated, for often they see in their own time - as an article of faith unsubstantiated by experience - the final end of human progress.

Charles A. Coulombe

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

Pope John Paul II

#20. [We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.

W.E.B. Du Bois

#21. That not adhering to those notions Reason dictates (concerning the nature of God), has been the occasion of all superstition, and those innumerable mischiefs that mankind (on account of religion) have done to themselves or to one another.

Matthew Tindal

#22. My religious superstition gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more happy day by day ...

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#23. The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely - which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.

Sydney J. Harris

#24. Theology is a superstition - Humanity a religion.

Robert G. Ingersoll

#25. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Anne Nicol Gaylor

#26. 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

#27. More than Christianity, the religion of Victorian times was a belief in human advance - the conviction that freed from ignorance and superstition, humanity could expand its power and be master of its destiny.

John N. Gray

#28. And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.

Thomas Hobbes

#29. Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] religion; not allowed, superstition.

Thomas Hobbes

#30. As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

Rowan Atkinson

#31. I saw the Eagle Tree for the first time on the third Monday of the month of March, which I guess could be considered auspicious if I believed in magic or superstition or religion ...

Ned Hayes

#32. Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

#33. If the empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained?

John Adams

#34. When the war started, religion and superstition (whatever the difference is) permeated the lives of ordinary soldiers, who lived in a thought world not too far removed from the seventeenth century.

Philip Jenkins

#35. ...people don't think in churches.

[Noyce on what bothers him most about organized religion.]

Robert Noyce

#36. That the earth in its course stood still; that a she-ass spoke; that a storm was quieted by a word, we do not believe, and we shall never again believe.

Adolf Von Harnack

#37. This is how we can distinguish true religion from superstition: when the Word of God directs us, there is true religion; but when each man follows his own opinion, or when men join together to follow an opinion they hold in common, the result is always concocted superstition.

John Calvin

#38. Deep scientific psychoanalysis reveals that excessive beliefs and dependence on religion is a superstition and fear induced psychiatric disease.

Debasish Mridha

#39. Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.

Edmund Burke

#40. I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

Baruch Spinoza

#41. I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.

James Buchanan

#42. If superstition could contradict science, the world may as well be on the back of a turtle. But giving into turtle worship was a bridge too far.

Thomm Quackenbush

#43. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition.

Richard Dawkins

#44. Christianity is such a silly religion.

Gore Vidal

#45. Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don't want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.

Federico Fellini

#46. Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god.

Stefan Molyneux

#47. For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.

Sean S. Kamali

#48. 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

#49. I look at what we call faith, and all I see is superstition and subjugation. All religions [ ... ] They create false divisions, and enslave us to fantasies, when we need to focus on the here and now.

Helene Wecker

#50. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

Carl Sagan

#51. We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#52. A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition. -Jose Bergamin, author (1895-1983)

Jose Bergamin

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

Joseph Joubert

#54. In his numerous historical and Scriptural works Bauer rejects all supernatural religion, and represents Christianity as a natural product of the mingling of the Stoic and Alexandrian philosophies ...

Joseph McCabe

#55. I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#56. When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force.

Ayn Rand

#57. There is a faculty in man that will acknowledge the unseen. He may scout and scare religion from him; but if he does, superstition perches near.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

#58. Education levels are highly and negatively correlated to religious belief. In other words, ignorance is bliss.

Cesar Nascimento

#59. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts.

Sheri S. Tepper

#60. A great fear, when it is ill-managed, is the parent of superstition; but a discreet and well-guided fear produces religion.

Jeremy Taylor

#61. So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake ... Religion is all bunk.

Thomas A. Edison

#62. Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#63. The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.

William Lloyd Garrison

#64. A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the
state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion,
of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the
fashionable idols!

Ludwig Von Mises

#65. 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

#66. I cherish the fantasy, even the hope, of adventures in other realms to come. But how can we choke out that most precious of all gifts, life, with the rope of religion around our necks? It chokes out freedom with dogma. It pinions us to the stake of superstition.

Gerry Spence

#67. What pity that Religion and Love, which heighten our relish for the things of both worlds, should ever run the human heart into enthusiasm, superstition, or uncharitableness!

Samuel Richardson

#68. Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

Robert G. Ingersoll

#69. You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms.

Susan Neiman

#70. Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

#71. Total victory is the only acceptable goal in a mind-control war because humanity is diminished so long as a single mind remains trapped in superstition [supernatural religion] by programming or choice.

Howard Thompson

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

William Ralph Inge

#73. Should we tolerate the blatant incorrectness of religion? Tolerating ignorance, superstition and stupidity will not provide for a healthy advancement of our society. Religion is cancer for modern thought, rationality, and even common sense.

Odin Zeus McGaffer

#74. Religion glorifies the dogma of a despotic, mythical God. Atheism ennobles the interests of free and progressive Man. Religion is superstition. Atheism is sanity. Religion is medieval. Atheism is modern.

E. Haldeman-Julius

#75. Religion is not removed by removing superstition.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#76. Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.

David McCullough

#77. Patriotism is a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion.

Gustave Herve

#78. Anthropologically informed works, from Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough to Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained or Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust, fascinatingly document the bizarre phenomenology of superstition and ritual. Read such books and marvel at the richness of human gullibility. But that is not

Richard Dawkins

#79. Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.

Albert Camus

#80. Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person.

Stefan Molyneux

#81. They may be all comprehended under three heads - 1st, Superstition; 2d, Power; 3d, the common interests of society, and the common rights of man.

Thomas Paine

#82. Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition.

Paul Kenneth Keller

#83. Religion without science is superstition. Science without religion is materialism.

Baha'u'llah

#84. Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition ... [and therefore] 'On to God!

Max Planck

#85. That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.

David Hume

#86. I like to say magic is the world's second oldest profession, a mystical and often awe-inspiring spectacle that, throughout the ages, has blended superstition, trickery and religion.

Criss Angel

#87. Religion worships God, while superstition profanes that worship.

Seneca The Younger

#88. Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Mark Hopkins

#90. America's forefathers had a vision of a spiritually enlightened utopia, in which freedom of thought, education of the masses, and scientific advancement would replace the darkness of outdated religious superstition.

Dan Brown

#91. I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps

Thornton Wilder

#92. Tribalism is an addiction that is driven by false beliefs that need to be reflected back to be perceived as true.

Stefan Molyneux

#93. I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.

Pankaj Mishra

#94. It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

Publius Papinius Statius

#95. A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#96. Christianity is a pestilent superstition.

Tacitus

#97. The problem is that one man's superstition is another man's religion, and vice versa. Many Protestants today still see Catholicism as being rife with superstition, ... while atheists and agnostics would see bien-pensant Protestants as worshiping an equally absurd form of the supernatural.

David Gibson