“Their superstitions will allow them to believe things without much critical thought.”

—  Sean Russell

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 76)

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 "Their superstitions will allow them to believe things without much critical thought." by Sean Russell?
Sean Russell photo
Sean Russell 39
author 1952

Related quotes

Marc Randazza photo

“If we discriminate against them, who is to say that Muslims or Jews aren’t next? I personally believe all religion is superstition, so who is to criticize if one group believes in the lord of the underworld or magic or whatever they want?”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer
Stevie Wonder photo

“When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Superstition
Song lyrics, Talking Book (1972)

Leon Trotsky photo

“Independent character is like independent thought, it cannot be developed without criticism.”

Leon Trotsky book The Revolution Betrayed

Source: The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Ch. 7

Immanuel Kant photo

“Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

B xxxiv
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Sam Harris photo

“The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
Robert Oppenheimer photo

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

"Encouragement of Science" (Address at Science Talent Institute, 6 Mar 1950), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, v.7, #1 (Jan 1951) p. 6-8
Context: We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

Max Scheler photo

“When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 73

John Burroughs photo

“It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative; it is not till the second or third thought that doubt begins. Belief is so vital and necessary that one would say the tendency was made strong at the perpetual risk of extra belief and superstition; it were better to believe too much than not enough. Hence mankind have always believed too much, as if to make sure that the anchor hold. To believe just enough, to free his mind from all cant and from all illusion, and see things just as in themselves they are, is the aim of the philosopher or of the true skeptic.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. VII: The Modern Skeptic

“No honest mind can exclude doubt, or ignore criticism, or shut its ears against reason. And if we could do these things we should be left, not with faith, but with a head-in-the-sand superstition.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.225

H.L. Mencken photo

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Le Contrat Social", in: Prejudices: Third Series (1922)
1920s
Context: All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

Related topics