Edward Gibbon Quotes

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

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

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.

Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

More than a century has passed since science laid down sound propositions as to the origins of the universe, but how many have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of criticism? A few thousands at the outside, who are lost in the midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and superstitions worthy of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve as puppets for religious impostors.

The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things [witches and witchcraft] are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

The bulk of mankind, even in those nations which are most celebrated for learning and wisdom, are still carried down the torrents of superstition, and entertain very unworthy apprehensions

Never wage war on religion, nor upon seemingly holy institutions, for this thing has too great a force upon the minds of fools.

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.

Poverty, and material and moral misery, are everywhere. There is little to cheer us. Unfortunately, this is the true state of the country. It’s not our fault: unthinking rulers, ignorant of the way of the world, have run this country for years, not to say centuries, and reduced a paradise to this sorry state. Most of our officials are inexperienced and at a loss. Our poor people have ability, but they have fallen under the influence of superstitions which have been presented as sacred dogma.

Public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice

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.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, as many as 60,000 people were executed in Europe as suspected witches. But it would be nice to think that centuries of advances in science and education have made people less prey to phantasms and falsehoods.

Religion has played a big part in eliminating the nuance in humanity. People began to believe things before they knew them. It stopped people from listening and learning with the patience and love of the God they believe in.

I cherish the fantasy, even the hope, of adventures in other realms to come. But how can we choke out that most precious of all gifts, life, with the rope of religion around our necks? It chokes out freedom with dogma. It pinions us to the stake of superstition.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.

Like it or not, we're still a primitive tribe ruled by fears, superstition and misinformation.

The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Superstition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial Religion.

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.