{"quotes":[{"text":"I die adoring God  loving my friends  not hating my enemies  and detesting superstition.","author":"Voltaire","tags":["superstition"],"id":1697,"author_id":"Voltaire"},{"text":"Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time, exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. ('Horror: A True Tale').","author":"John Berwick Harwood","tags":["fable","folklore","horror","superstition"],"id":1805,"author_id":"John+Berwick+Harwood"},{"text":"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.","author":"Charles Darwin","tags":["creation","science","special","superstition","universe"],"id":1904,"author_id":"Charles+Darwin"},{"text":"Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.","author":"Herman Melville","tags":["herd-mentality","myth","politics","prophecy","superstition"],"id":3880,"author_id":"Herman+Melville"},{"text":"This is not education my friend. It is a process of manufacturing computation devices that look like Homo sapiens, and thereby falsely labeled as Education.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["academics","brainy","education","education-reform","education-system","educational-philosophy","educational","inspirational","knowledge","knowledge","knowledge-teaching","knowledge-wisdom","leadership","learning","parenting","parenting-children","philosophy","prejudice","prejudices","racism","superstition","teacher","wisdom","wise-sayings"],"id":7179,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"At present, a good many men engaged in scientific pursuits, and who have signally failed in gaining recognition among their fellows, are endeavoring to make reputations among the churches by delivering weak and vapid lectures upon the 'harmony of Genesis and Geology.' Like all hypocrites, these men overstate the case to such a degree, and so turn and pervert facts and words that they succeed only in gaining the applause of other hypocrites like themselves. Among the great scientists they are regarded as generals regard sutlers who trade with both armies.Surely the time must come when the wealth of the world will not be wasted in the propagation of ignorant creeds and miraculous mistakes. The time must come when churches and cathedrals will be dedicated to the use of man; when minister and priest will deem the discoveries of the living of more importance than the errors of the dead; when the truths of Nature will outrank the 'sacred' falsehoods of the past, and when a single fact will outweigh all the miracles of Holy Writ.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?When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then, and not until then, will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher, become a real and blessed truth.","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["applause","blessed","brave","cathedrals","church","churches","civilize","clergyman","creeds","dead","discoveries","elevate","enlighten","errors","fact","facts","failed","falsehoods","generals","genesis","geology","great","harmony","holy-writ","honest","hypocrites","ignorant","lectures","living","mankind","minister","miracles","miraculous","mistakes","money","nature","past","patriot","peers","perfert","philanthropist","philosopher","poet","priest","progress","pursuit","real","recognition","reputation","sacred","school","science","scientific","stlers","superstition","teacher","think","truth","university","use","vapid","waste","weak","wealth"],"id":14144,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"},{"text":"Dear Anarcho-Communist,If you and I ever find ourselves in a stateless society, have no fear. Just mention that you are a communist, and I promise I will never try to 'oppress' and 'exploit' you by offering to trade with you, or by offering to pay you to do work.Sincerely,Larken Rose.","author":"Larken Rose","tags":["anarcho-capitalism","anarchy","ancap","ancom","coercion","collectivism","communism","freedom","laissez-faire","libertarian","libertopia","liberty","non-aggression-principle","socialism","society","statism","superstition","voluntaryism"],"id":15926,"author_id":"Larken+Rose"},{"text":"Some people wouldn’t still be sane, if they were not religious or superstitious; some wouldn’t be disabled or dead.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["aphorism","aphorisms","aphorist","aphorists","atheism","atheist","atheists","believer","believers","cripple","crippled","disability","disable","disabled","funny","hilarious","humor","humorous","humour","insane","insanity","joke","jokes","nonbeliever","nonbelievers","religion","religious","sane","sanity","satire","superstition","superstitious"],"id":16415,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"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 simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat. The way Inman saw it, if a thing like Fredericksburg was to be used as a marker of current position, then many years hence, at the rate we're going, we'll be eating one another raw.","author":"Charles Frazier","tags":["future","oracle","superstition"],"id":16685,"author_id":"Charles+Frazier"},{"text":"I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers. I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be 'authority', and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders. I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in 'authority'.","author":"Larken Rose","tags":["anarchy","ancap","delusion","freedom","government","libertarian","liberty","statism","superstition","voluntaryism"],"id":17972,"author_id":"Larken+Rose"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":265,"pages":27,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}