Pernicious Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.

  Michael J. Boskin

  Government, Voting, President

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• Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Intellectual, Creationism, Perversion

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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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• I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

  John Adams

  Running, Democracies Have, Long

  John Adams (2001). “The Political Writings of John Adams”, p.405, Regnery Publishing

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

  John Eudes

  Catholic, Innovation, Matter

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

  Theodore Schroeder

  Atheism, Influence, Humans

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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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• 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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• there is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them.

  Mary Parker Follett

  People, Experts, Crowds

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• A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Writing, Long, Novelists

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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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• 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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