Terence Fisher Quotes

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

I think religion is a bunch of hooey, and I think that the holidays are an opportunity for people to get stressed out, getting their rush to shop. It's so conformist.

The Jewish part of me is superstitious.

Superstitions and belief in magic are perennial in just the same way as religion, and something near to being universal among mankind; and why this is so may be interesting, but in most cases the beliefs themselves are devoid of interesting content, at least to me.

I think it's fascinating that there's a whole holiday dedicated to things that we fear and that's so interesting about the nature of humanity.

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.

For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways or reason.

In novels in general - and also on the television - we do live in a world where bodies is what we are. We do not talk about the spirit or the soul, and there is a sense that we no longer talk about beliefs, either Freudian or Marxist.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

We have to be very conscious of the fact that beneath every illness is a prohibition. A prohibition that comes from a superstition.

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.

Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.

When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.

... force is the natural ally of superstition, and superstition knows it well.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws …

Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power.

Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.

It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.

Religion is a superstition that originated in man's mental ability to solve natural phenomena. The Church is an organized institution that has always been a stumbling block to progress.

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.