A Quote by Steven Pinker

All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers.

Steven Pinker

Quote Topics

Belief Gods Malevolent Murder Over People Powers Sacrifice Supernatural Witches World

Quote Author

Steven Pinker
Canadian - Scientist
Born: September 18, 1954

Tons of folktales have to do with hares and witches. Basically, witches all over Europe turn into hares and are able to do malevolent things in the form of a hare. It goes back to the great god Pan. Pan is, if we're going to do archetypal projections, related to the Christian Satan, but as a child, Pan was wrapped in a hare's hide.

Robert Eggers

This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.

Ian Rankin

My core belief is to seek peace in the world, helping people eliminate certain malevolent attitudes through education as much as possible.

Fethullah Gulen

Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of his tragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernatural knowledge.

Andrew Coyle Bradley

It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and advantages.

Robert Winston

In our patriarchal world, we are all taught - whether we like to think we are or not - that God, being male, values maleness much more than he values femaleness... that in order to propitiate God, women must propitiate men.

Sonia Johnson

I concluded that all religions had the same foundation - a belief in the supernatural - a power above nature that man could influence by worship - by sacrifice and prayer.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Gods? Don't let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshippers. You don't even have to have powers anymore. In my time I've seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods - you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves. God is just a word. Like Fury. like demon, Just words people use for things they don't understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It's just as appropriate.

Joanne Harris

pity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.

Marilynne Robinson

Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods. [Lat., Deos placatos pietas efficiet et sanctitas.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A man lusts to become a god... and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?

David Zindell

It's my belief that when you're dealing with the supernatural, the supernatural still has to trump we mortals, it still has to be more powerful than we are. You can't really defeat it. You can live to fight another day but it's very rare that a human being can actually destroy a supernatural force.

Frank Spotnitz

Being at a World Cup is a sacrifice? Twenty days is a sacrifice? What about the people there working for the team, up at five every morning? That's sacrifice. It's not a sacrifice to play.

Fabio Capello

The truth wears longer than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of gods; it is Deity itself.