Daily Inspiration Quote by John Selden

Selden skewers a familiar kind of self-congratulation: the person who prides himself on being too rational for superstition, then quietly rebuilds superstition under a different label. The line works because it turns skepticism into a kind of vanity. You can reject the old omens, the rituals, the inherited fears - and still end up organizing your life around a symbolic “never,” which is just belief wearing the costume of disbelief.

The “wrong side” is the tell. Selden isn’t defending superstition; he’s diagnosing how easily contrarianism hardens into its own reflexes. The black-clothing example is disarmingly mundane. He doesn’t need ghosts or astrology to make the point. The superstition is visible in the negative: not the color you choose, but the one you refuse. That’s how irrational commitments often operate politically and socially too - through taboos, purity tests, and identity-by-exclusion.

Context matters: Selden is a 17th-century English statesman and legal scholar speaking from a world where religious conflict, civil authority, and popular belief were entangled and combustible. Openly policing “superstition” could be a way to police people. His caution lands as political wisdom: in the rush to purge error, reformers can slip into new dogmas, just with updated branding. It’s a warning against the comforting fantasy that reason is simply the absence of belief, rather than a disciplined willingness to examine your own rules - especially the ones that look like principles but behave like charms.