Antony Johnston Quotes

My work explores the frontier between rationalism and superstition and the wavering boundary between the two.

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories.

The longer you hold a belief, the less likely it is to be true.

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge; this, I take it, is the reason why Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world, not by faith, nor by charity, nor by the other fruits of the Holy Spirit, but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they defend their cause, like everyone else, by miracles, that is by ignorance, which is the source of all malice; thus they turn a faith, which may be true, into superstition.

Folk tales, fairy tales, religion, the occult - these are the things I'm most passionate about, even more than cinema. And I'm very passionate about cinema.

Mythologies are violent things, and to be true to them, you have to go to primal territory.

If you hear an old parable and you don't believe it, it's mythology. If you hear an old parable and you believe it, it's religion.

All of our lives are governed by a certain degree of faith in bullshit.

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)

Religon is misunderstood mythology

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful

I agree with the sentiment that it's probably more dangerous to believe some things that aren't so than to not believe something - you know, to believe in a lie.

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.

There is nothing in religion but fiction.

There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.

Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.

One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.

A legend can just as well be founded in the future as in the past." "It's called a 'prophecy,'" Urruah said. "You may have heard of the concept.

If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.