William Shakespeare Quotes

People will believe absurd things - in the 19th century and now.

If the Bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it.

Belief is such a powerful thing - but because it is, it can also be very destructive and it's very easily manipulated.

He who knows all things and believes nothing is damned.

I have noticed that many who do not believe in God believe in everything else, even in the evil eye.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

[Religious] superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

Often what passes for faith in this world is little more than gullibility.

Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?

If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men's belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies.

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.

Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.

When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.

The world is full of smart, poor people.

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

The greatest discrimination in the world now is against poor people.

Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them.

Why is it that the less intelligence people have, the more spiritual they are? They seem to fill all the vacant, ignorant spaces in their heads with soul. Which explains how it is that the less knowledge they have, the more religion.

The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.

In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty.

People who are always praising the past And especially the time of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-poor.