#superstition

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#magic #religion #superstition #intelligence

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#skepticism #superstition #religion

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

— Joseph Joubert

#capable #only #religion #souls #superstition

Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them. ↗

— Thomas Fuller

#cautious #equally #even #keeping #making

Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, accomplished. ↗

— Ulysses S. Grant

#always #anywhere #been #everyone #go

Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish. ↗

— Adam Weishaupt

#circumstance #constitution #directed #jealous #noble

This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice. ↗

— Adam Weishaupt

#attaining #clouds #enlightening #great #held

It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian personality with the chaotically nihilist and anarchic one. Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones. As Bertold Brecht's character says over the corpse of the terrible Arturo Ui, the bitch that bore him is always in heat. But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#authoritarianism #bertold-brecht #islamism #nihilism #osama-bin-laden

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

— Countess of Blessington

#confidence #fear #only #religion #superstition

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other. ↗

— James F. Cooper

#close #each #ever #ignorance #mathematical