“Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.”

—  John Tyndall

Science and Man.
Fragments of Science, Vol. II (1879)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence." by John Tyndall?
John Tyndall photo
John Tyndall 40
British scientist 1820–1893

Related quotes

“From the standpoint of the psychology of personal constructs we may define a disorder as any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Psychology of Personal Constructs, 1955, p. 831

David Hilbert photo

“[M]athematics is not a popular subject... The reason for this is to be found in the common superstition that [it] is but a continuation... of the fine art of arithmetic, of juggling with numbers. [We] combat that superstition, by offering, instead of formulas, figures that may be looked at and that may easily be supplemented by models which the reader may construct. This book... bring[s] about a greater enjoyment of mathematics, by making it easier... to penetrate the essence of mathematics without... a laborious course of studies.”

David Hilbert Geometry and the Imagination

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

Joseph Campbell photo

“Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people's religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology. (8)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Yukteswar Giri photo

“Keen intelligence is two-edged, It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one's self. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Frances Wright photo

“Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Lecture V: Morals
A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)

“The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices"
Strictly Personal (1953)

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.”
Nec vero superstitione tollenda religio tollitur.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, chapter LXXII, sec. 148
De Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC)

David Fleming photo

“The reduction of a society and culture to dependence on mathematical abstraction has infantilised a grown-up civilisation and is well on the way to destroying it. Civilisations self-destruct anyway, but it is reasonable to ask whether they have done so before with such enthusiasm, in obedience to such an acutely absurd superstition, while claiming with such insistence that they were beyond being seduced by the irrational promises of religion.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Surviving the Future, (2016), p. 180, Epilogue http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“Superstition attaches to this life, and religion to the next; superstition is allied to fatality, and religion to virtue; it is from the vivacity of earthly desires that we become superstitious, and it is, on the contrary, by the sacrifice of these same desires that we are religious.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Ten Years' Exile (Dix années d'exil, written 1810–1813, posthumously published 1821), ch. 16

Related topics