Superstition Quotes (8)

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
'Maxims for Revolutionists', in Man and Superman (1905), 230.
See also:  |  Education (62)  |  Philosophy (27)

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
The Descent of Man (1871), Vol. 2, 404-5.
See also:  |  Evolution (125)  |  Human Nature (19)  |  Monkey (3)  |  Slave (2)

It is the business of science to offer rational explanations for all the events in the real world, and any scientist who calls on God to explain something is falling down on his job. This applies as much to the start of the expansion as to any other event. If the explanation is not forthcoming at once, the scientist must suspend judgment: but if he is worth his salt he will always maintain that a rational explanation will eventually be found. This is the one piece of dogmatism that a scientist can allow himself—and without it science would be in danger of giving way to superstition every time that a problem defied solution for a few years.
The Mystery of the Expanding Universe (1964), 122.
See also:  |  Big Bang (7)  |  Enquiry (37)  |  God (53)  |  Problem (25)

Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition.
In Fielding Hudson Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine (1966), 577.
See also:  |  Law (70)  |  Physician (87)  |  Quack (6)

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
Journal, 27 Jun 1852, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906), Vol. 10, 158.
See also:  |  Truth (117)

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 5, Ch. 1. In Andrew S. Skinner (ed.), The Wealth of Nations: Books IV-V (1999), 384.
See also:  |  Science (225)

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage—at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age.
More Worlds than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1854), 42.
See also:  |  Astronomy (35)  |  Geology (62)  |  Religion (34)  |  Truth (117)

When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 544:20.

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Original words on great scientific discoveries.
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I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. --Albert Einstein
I try to identify myself with the atoms...I ask what I would do if I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom. --Linus Pauling




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