#superstition

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. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#folly #future #humanity #ignorant #important

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

— Francis Bacon

#men #misses #observe #root #superstition

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

#believe #classes #highly #influential #intellectual

I have a superstition about saying too much about what I want to happen, just in case it all disappears, or someone else comes along and beats me to it. ↗

— Gil Gerard

#along #beats #case #comes #disappears

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

But let me say this. I am a superstitious man, a ridiculous failing but I must confess it here. And so if some unlucky accident should befall my youngest son, if some police officer should accidentally shoot him, if he should hang himself while in his jail cell, if new witnesses appear to testify to his guilt, my superstition will make me feel that it was the result of the ill will still borne me by some people here. Let me go further. If my son is struck by a bolt of lightning I will blame some of the people here. If his plane show fall into the sea or his ship sink beneath the waves of the ocean, if he should catch a mortal fever, if his automobile should be struck by a train, such is my superstition that I would blame the ill will felt by people here. Gentlemen, that ill will, that bad luck, I could never forgive. But aside from that let me swear by the souls of my grandchildren that I will never break the peace we have made. After all, are we or are we not better men than those pezzonovanti who have killed countless millions of men in our lifetimes? ↗

— Mario Puzo

#the-don #the-godfather #vendetta #forgiveness

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

#curse #destiny #divine-intervention #fate #fortune

Superstition is the poison of the mind. ↗

— Joseph Lewis

#poison #superstition

In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual. ↗

— William Robertson Smith

#common #dictate #foreign #individual #magical