Pernicious Quotes - Page 3

• There are flaws in the way politics is reported in this country today and we should do something about it, .. Radio and television coverage of politics doesn't see its role as a mission to explain, but to destroy, in a pernicious culture in which journalists pit themselves against politicians.

  Tim Allen

  Country, Culture, Roles

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• Lust is an immoderate wantonness of the flesh, a sweet poison, a cruel pestilence; a pernicious poison, which weakeneth the body of man, and effeminateth the strength of the heroic mind.

  Francis Quarles

  Sweet, Men, Lust

  Richard Crashaw, George Gilfillan, Francis Quarles (1857). “Poetical Works: And, Quarles' Emblems”, p.213

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• The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.

  David Hume

  Arbitrary, Taxes

  David Hume (1826). “The Philosophical Works: Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Ed. Publ. by the Author”, p.387

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• The main cause is a pernicious falsehood propagated against her being, namely that she is inferior by her nature. Inferior in what? What has man ever done that woman, under the same advantages could not do?

  Ernestine Rose

  Men, Causes, Done

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• If unbridled licence of speech and writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of nature, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Writing, Errors, Race

  Pope Leo XIII (1990). “A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII”, p.108, TAN Books

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• Those who need a champion cannot afford compromise, in the face of forces that are powerful, persistent and pernicious and greedy.

  Elizabeth Edwards

  Powerful, Champion, Faces

  "Elizabeth Edwards: 'With Less Armor Than I Have, They Fight Too'". Elizabeth Edwards' speech at Consumer Watchdog’s 2007 Rage for Justice dinner, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 7, 2010.

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• If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Honesty, Party, Army

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• Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace.

  Pascal Mercier

  Feelings, Gold, Bars

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.332, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The days of the Cross are counted. We must deliver the German nation from the pernicious influence of Christianity.

  Erich Ludendorff

  Christian, Religious, Influence

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• One inconvenience... may attend bold and arduous attempts: frequent failure may discourage. This evil, however, is not more pernicious than the slow proficiency which is the natural consequence of too easy tasks.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Ambition, Evil, Tasks

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edward Malone (1867). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone”, p.114

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• Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Imagination, Storytelling, Poet

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• A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Evil, Despair

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• "There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself." "With words."

  Steven Erikson

  Roots, People, Hatred

  Steven Erikson (2009). “House Of Chains: Malazan Book Of The Fallen 4”, p.236, Random House

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• History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

  Joseph Heller

  Children, War, Men

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing

  William Shakespeare

  Dog, Heart, Men

  William Shakespeare (2005). “William Shakespeare: The Complete Works”, p.2906, OUP Oxford

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• We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things to be misleading, even pernicious.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mean, Animal, Thinking

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

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• The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Life, People, Intellectual

  Ludwig Von Mises (1947). “Planned Chaos”, p.81, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I have spent a lot of time arguing that the theory of group selection is not the stupid, pernicious doctrine that many biologists once claimed it to be. The theory is not just conceptually coherent; there are adaptations out there in nature (like reduced virulence in some viruses) that evolved because there was group selection.

  Elliott Sober

  Stupid, Groups, Viruses

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rude, Individuality, Wish

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2360, Delphi Classics

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• Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Discovery, Secret, Would Be

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.40, Booklassic

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• In Germany democracy died by the headman's axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Insulting, Democracy, Germany

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• I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting some false and most pernicious notions about consistency - and to such a degree that the average man has turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around and is proud to be "consistent," unchanging, immovable, fossilized, where it should be his humiliation.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Rights, Average

  Mark Twain, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (2009). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.407, Courier Corporation

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• It is the great support and solace of the saints in all the distresses that befall them here, that there is a wise Spirit sitting in all the wheels of motion, and governing the most eccentric creatures and their most pernicious designs to blessed and happy issues.

  John Flavel

  Wise, Religious, Blessed

  John Flavel (2013). “The Mystery of Providence”, p.4, Lulu Press, Inc

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• A garden is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg , and his whole body to irresistible destruction.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Garden, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.357

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• The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Justice, Diversity, Alive

  :The French Revolution" by Mary Wollstonecraft, Bk. V, (Ch. 4), 1794.

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