Guy de Maupassant Quotes

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate.

Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the unknown.

We human beings get nervous if we don't know what's going on. It's the rule for creating scary stories: the unknown is always more frightening than the known.

There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die. ‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky.

I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?

Our minds have the need to know. When we dont know we make assumptions - they make us feel safer than not knowing. And we are pretty much always making assumptions.

When something out of the ordinary happens, it is ridiculous to say that it is a mystery or a portent of something to come... the mystery is created in (their) minds, and by waiting for disaster, it is from their very minds that it occurs.

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down." -The Judge

Men fear most what they cannot see.

The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not.

Men's minds tend to fear more keenly those things that are absent.

There can be no doubt ... of our dependence upon forces beyond our control. Primitive man was so impotent in the face of these forces that g , especially in an unfavorable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old saying goes, fear created gods.

We always feel threatened by things we don't know. But, there are definitely some weird things going on.

Far too often, when we think we are frightened by mystery, the fact is that we are haunted by history.

We live in a society that is afraid of ways of being it doesn't understand.

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it - because it is a fact.

I always think it's not what we know that's terrifying; it's what we don't know. That's sort of pervasive with everything in life.

We look about in puzzlement at our world, with a sense of unease and disquiet. We think of ourselves as scholars in arcane liturgies, single men trapped in worlds beyond our devising. The truth is far simpler: there are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm.

People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.

Superstition is but the fear of belief.