To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and...

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods....

There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in his name than any other figure in history. You show me...

Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

It’s natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how...

The reason so many people never get anywhere in life is because when opportunity knocks, they are out in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.

I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma....

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

[In the theatre] Thanks.’ He paused on the stairs. “And good-“Don’t say it!” yelled Helena. “No whistling, no well-wishing.””I thought you weren’t superstitious.””I’m not,’ she said defiantly, ‘but obviously there are limits.

In consequence of Darwin’s reformed Theory of Descent, we are now in a position to establish scientifically the groundwork of a non-miraculous history of the development of the human race. … If any person feels...

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...

Superstition is another word for Everyday life.

The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.

Excuses, criticisms, and superstitions are vitamins for haters, but poison for the successful. Rise above!

I have always been interested in witchcraft and superstition, but have never had much traffic with ghosts, so I began asking people everywhere what they thought about such things, and I began to find out...

When you consider the superstitions and the imaginings of the old Cornish country-folk up to my grandmother’s day, how their lives were swaddled in them from the cradle to the grave, their daily actions in...

It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like that, for lately the things they didn’t want to happen were the things that happened and the logic of this was that if...

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...

If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

God made them as stubble to our swords.

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,...

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...

Theology is a superstition—Humanity a religion.

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…

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth – scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books – might easily conclude that we are intent...

Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?

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,...

Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of...

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.

When I was fifteen, a companion and I, on a dare, went into the mound one day just at sunset. We saw some of those Indians for the first time; we got directions from them...

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds...

Where the flag of truth waves unfurled, there you will find superstition waiting in ambush.

In his mind, Inman likened the swirling paths of vulture flight to the coffee grounds seeking pattern in his cup. Anyone could be oracle for the random ways things fall against each other. It was...

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...

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a...

The idea of original sin–of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives–inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as...

Superstition is an unreasoning fear of God.

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it.

I can say with certitude that superstitions are more deleterious than black magic.

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...

POUNDWe spend twelve hundred generations developing so-called civilization to the point where it produces an expert who can offer us salvation from our superstitions, and all we end up with is another superstition! If it...

e 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...

faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the...

Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don’t blame them. It’s superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need… if you...

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women’s bodies.

Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the...

Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?

We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.