333 Quotes About Superstition

The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.{Letter to his son and 6th US president, John Quincy Adams, November 13 1816}

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their godsLike horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shapeBodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.

Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.