Pernicious Quotes - Page 6

• The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.

  Toni Morrison

  Ideas, Should Have, World

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• World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps

  Rohinton Mistry

  Dream, Ambition, World

  Rohinton Mistry (2008). “Tales from Firozsha Baag”, p.117, Faber & Faber

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• Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong.

  Gerry Spence

  Ideas, America, Long

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• The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with an all-holy God.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Ideas, Mind

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• Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation on Thursday, leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department, but one of his legal innovations was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections.

  Edwin Meese

  Justice, Innovation, Thursday

  "Holder's Legacy of Racial Politics" by Meese & Blackwell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 29, 2014.

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• Nationality was the most pernicious, depersonalizing, homogenizing label that could ever be attached to the human individual.

  Rolf Hochhuth

  Labels, Individual, Humans

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• Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

  Richard Steele

  Mind, Disease, Flattery

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The Spectator: with notes and general index, from the London stereotype edition ...”, p.346

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• Any innovation in matters of faith is extremely pernicious and utterly damnable!

  John Eudes

  Catholic, Innovation, Matter

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• Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

  Alain de Botton

  Happiness, Success, Fall

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• The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

  Francis Bacon

  Order, Numbers, Support

  Francis Bacon, William Rawley (1858). “The Works of Francis Bacon”, p.56

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• The socially pernicious, racially wasteful, and soul-withering consequences of the working of mothers outside the home must cease. And this can only come to pass, either through the programme of institutional upbringing, or through the intimate renaissance of the home.

  Ellen Key

  Mother, Women, Home

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• Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man.

  Constantine the Great

  Reflection, Men, Thinking

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• If one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered, the harm caused, especially to children, by the pernicious doctrine of original sin, a case could be made for saying that the world would have been better off without Christianity.

  A.J. Ayer

  Religious, Children, War

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• Freedom of belief is pernicious, it is nothing but the freedom to be wrong.

  Robert Bellarmine

  Belief

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• More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Nonsense, Treaties

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.4147, Delphi Classics

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• Religion is ... the most pernicious single influence in human society, without one redeeming feature.

  Theodore Schroeder

  Atheism, Influence, Humans

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• Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Men, Judging

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• Now that Ronald Reagan's place in history is secure, liberals are trying to remake him. A pernicious myth is that Reagan and Tip O'Neill were great friends.

  Craig Shirley

  Trying, Great Friend, Remakes

  Conservative Political Action Conference, www.esquire.com. February 13, 2011.

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• When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy, or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. . . . War and pestilence have always waste and luxury, among the other evils that follow in their train.

  John Rae

  Country, War, Men

  John Rae (1834). “Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy: Exposing the Fallacies of the System of Free Trade, and of Some Other Doctrines Maintained in the "Wealth of Nations."”, p.123

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• Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.

  Irving Kristol

  Emotion, Nostalgia, Endure

  New York Times Magazine, December 20, 1964.

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• I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.

  Camille Paglia

  Class, White, Benefits

  "Interview with the Vamp". Interview with Virginia Postrel, reason.com. August/September 1995.

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• Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed.

  Henry VIII of England

  Weed, Beer, Wicked

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• One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Haste, Obscurity, Effects

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.54

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• Of all the ingenious mistakes into which erring man has fallen, perhaps none have been so pernicious in their consequences, or have brought so many evils into the world, as the popular opinion that the way of the transgressor is pleasant and easy.

  Hosea Ballou

  Mistake, Men, Evil

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• That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.

  David Hume

  Enthusiasm, Superstitions, Corruption

  David Hume, Knud Haakonssen (1994). “Hume: Political Essays”, p.46, Cambridge University Press

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