Superstition Quotes, Sayings
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best superstition quotes and sayings from authors, scientists, philosophers, and more.
Best superstition quotes and sayings
Superstitions are strange things. They’re based on nothing but fear and imagination, but they can still have a powerful hold on people. Just ask the person who won’t walk under a ladder or fears the consequences of breaking a mirror.
But superstitions can also be innocent whimsy. After all, what’s the harm in knocking on wood or carrying a rabbit’s foot? If it makes you feel better, go for it!
The following quotes and sayings capture the essence of the role superstition plays in our lives.
1. Funny superstition quotes
If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
Groucho Marx
I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.
Babe Ruth
It’s bad luck to be superstitious.
Bill Backman
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
Mark Twain
Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational — but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
Judith Viorst
A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.
George Iles
Superstition is believing that something means anything and that anything means something and that each thing means a particular thing and will mean a particular thing is coming. Oh yes it does.
Gertrude Stein
Superstition is the spleen of the soul.
Alexander Pope
2. Famous superstition quotes
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
Francis Bacon
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.
Martin Luther
Superstition is not a matter of ignorance, but of intellect that has not found its way to certainty.
Thomas Jefferson
Like it or not, we’re still a primitive tribe ruled by fears, superstition and misinformation.
Bill Maher
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.
Mark Twain
Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural.
Theophrastus
From books and authors
Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself.
Stephen King
I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.
Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
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
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.
Cormac McCarthy
From music
Superstition aint the way.
Stevie Wonder, Superstition
From TV
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.
Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone
I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
Michael Scott, The Office
From the Bible
Refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
1 Timothy 4:7
Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:31
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8
3. Superstition vs faith quotes
What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.
Alice Walker
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
Abraham Lincoln
Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.
Archibald Alexander Hodge
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?
Michel de Montaigne
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Man’s mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.
John Calvin
About religion
Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.
Marguerite Gardiner
We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
Voltaire
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Pope John Paul II
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature.
Thomas Jefferson
I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
4. Superstition and fate quotes
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Thomas Huxley
Thou oughtest to be nice, even to Superstition, in keeping thy Promises; and therefore thou shouldst be equally cautious in making them.
Thomas Fuller
The superstition in which we grew up, Though we may recognize it, does not lose Its power over us. Not all are free Who make mock of their chains.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
5. Superstition and science quotes
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
Adam Smith
Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
Henry David Thoreau
Science intensifies religious truth by cleansing it of ignorance and superstition.
Charles Lindbergh
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
George Bernard Shaw
6. Superstition and wisdom quotes
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Superstitions are, for the most part, but the shadows of great truths.
Tryon Edwards
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
Laurence J. Peter
Superstition is born of ignorance and fear, and thrives the most when reason is asleep.
Zarathushtra
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
Jose Bergamin
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
H. L. Mencken
7. Against superstition quotes
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
What we don’t understand we can make mean anything.
Chuck Palahniuk
As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.
Andy Kaufman
Anti superstition
Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.
Joseph Joubert
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
8. Short superstition quotes
Superstition is the poetry of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Superstition vanishes before truth.
Arnobius
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
Helen Keller
Superstition is the child of ignorance and fear.
Walter Scott
Superstition is great enemy of man but bigotry is worse.
Swami Vivekananda
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
Edmund Burke
Superstition is the refuge of the ignorant.
George Bernard Shaw
Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
Marlene Dietrich
There you have it, some of the best superstition quotes and sayings ever spoken. For more great quotes, check out the following:
By Greg Johnson | Published 9/6/2023
