Pernicious Quotes - Page 4

• No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.

  William Godwin

  Able, Bears, Imagine

  William Godwin (1793). “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,: And Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness”, p.880

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• How dangerous it is for our salvation, how unworthy of God and of ourselves, how pernicious even for the peace of our hearts, to want always to stay where we are! Our whole life was only given us to advance us by great strides toward our heavenly country.

  Francois Fenelon

  Country, Heart, Want

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• That pernicious sentiment, "Our country, right or wrong."

  James Russell Lowell

  Country, Sentiments, Our Country

  James Russell Lowell (1898). “Poems of James Russell Lowell With Biographical Sketch by Nathan Haskell Dole”, p.521, Library of Alexandria

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• There is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock market. One method is just pernicious to the body politic as the other kind.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Gambling, Race, Differences

  United States. President (1901-1909 : Roosevelt), Theodore Roosevelt (1908). “The Roosevelt Policy: Speeches, Letters and State Papers, Relating to Corporate Wealth and Closely Allied Topics, of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States”

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• Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Use, Opinion

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell”, London : G. Allen & Unwin

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• Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

  Dani Shapiro

  Color, Sick, Grace

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• I always have a high regard for the individual and have an insuperable distaste for violence and clubmanship. All these motives made me into a passionate pacifist and anti-militarist. I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.

  Albert Einstein

  Personality, Passionate, Unjust

  "My Credo" by Albert Einstein, 1932.

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• Statistics prove that teenage Internet gambling is the fastest growing addiction of the day, akin to drug and alcohol abuse in the 1930s. It's pernicious, it's evil, it's certainly one that feeds on those who are the weakest members of society - and that's the young and the poor.

  David Robertson

  Teenage, Gambling, Evil

  "Study: Internet gambling stakes are high". www.cnn.com. March 17, 2002.

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• The path to eternal life is not on a plateau. Rather, it is an incline, ever onward and upward. Hence, ever-increasing spiritual understanding and energy are required to reach our destination. Because the pernicious opposition by Satan continues, the continuous enlightened guidance of the Holy Ghost is absolutely essential.

  Keith K. Hilbig

  Spiritual, Onward And Upward, Understanding

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• No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

  Roger Brooke Taney

  Men, Liberty, Doctrine

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• If it had not been for the pernicious power of envy, men would not so have exalted vengeance above innocence and profit above justice... in these acts of revenge on others, men take it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all who are in distress.

  Thucydides

  Revenge, Men, Law

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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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• All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.

  Edward Abbey

  Government, Liberty, Form

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.17, RosettaBooks

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• The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.

  Steven Pressfield

  Motivational, Procrastination, Destiny

  Steven Pressfield (2002). “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”, p.22, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition.

  C. S. Lewis

  Book, Hero, Long

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• Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter.

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Suicide, Daughter, Song

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• The break from the supposedly culturally-narrow religious bases of knowledge in favor of supposedly trans-cultural scientific bases of knowledge served as the self-justification of a particularly pernicious form of cultural imperialism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Religious, Self, Favors

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• State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

  Noam Chomsky

  Overcoming, States, Projects

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• I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.

  Ben Jonson

  Ignorance, Science, Men

  Ben Jonson, Robert S. Miola (2000). “Every Man in His Humour: Quarto Version”, p.65, Manchester University Press

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• All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious.

  Ibn Warraq

  Dream, Men, Sick

  Ibn Warraq (2010). “Why I Am Not a Muslim”, p.11, Prometheus Books

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• The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Stupid, Practice, Religion

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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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