It is bad luck to be superstitious.

—Andrew W. Mathis

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

—Jose Bergamin

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

—Alfred Whitehead

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

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

 —Edmund Burke

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

—Harriett Beecher Stowe

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.

—Voltaire

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

—Oscar Wilde

It is the fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end as superstitions.

—Thomas H. Huxley

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

—Marlene Dietrich

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

—Adam Smith

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

—Carl Sagan