Pernicious Quotes

1. "In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
Author: Adam Smith

2. "On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there."
Author: Aleister Crowley

3. "All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will."
Author: Alexander Herzen

4. "Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion."
Author: Allan Bloom

5. "[H]e could feel his unshakable enemy, depression, blooming in him like a pernicious flower that could never quite be ripped out."
Author: Andrea Speed

6. "For a long time it was assumed that anything so miraculously energetic as radioactivity must be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toothpaste and laxatives put radioactive thorium in their products, and at least until the late 1920s the Glen Springs Hotel in the Finger Lakes region of New York (and doubtless others as well) featured with pride the therapeutic effects of its ‘Radio-active mineral springs27'. It wasn't banned in consumer products until 193828. By this time it was much too late for Mme Curie, who died of leukaemia in 1934. Radiation, in fact, is so pernicious and long-lasting that even now her papers from the 1890s – even her cookbooks – are too dangerous to handle. Her lab books are kept in lead-lined boxes29 and those who wish to see them must don protective clothing."
Author: Bill Bryson

7. "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."
Author: C.S. Lewis

8. "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."
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan

9. "What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious."
Author: Cicero

10. "In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation--and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."
Author: Cornel West

11. "For me, this is exactly what's so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money -- and then tell us that it's only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money."
Author: David Graeber

12. "It is indeed a mortifying reflection to those who are actuated by the love of fame, so justly denominated the last infirmity of noble minds, that the wisest legislator and most exalted genius that ever reformed or enlightened the world can never expect such tributes of praise as are lavished on the memory of pretended saints, whose whole conduct was probably to the last degree odious or contemptible, and whose industry was entirely directed to the pursuit of objects pernicious to mankind. It is only a conqueror, a personage no less entitled to our hatred, who can pretend to the attainment of equal renown and glory."
Author: David Hume

13. "To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor — to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire — to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower — to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind — to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in — Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation."
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

14. "Oh, my dear, relations are like drugs, - useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them."
Author: Elizabeth Von Arnim

15. "In fact, some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out"
Author: Fareed Zakaria

16. "The Qur'an began by criticizing two closely related aspects of that society: the polytheism or multiplicity of gods which was symptomatic of the segmentation of society, and the gross socioeconomic disparities that equally rested on and perpetuated a pernicious divisiveness of mankind. The two are obverse and converse of the same coin: only God can ensure the essential unity of the human race as His creation, His subjects, and those responsible finally to Him alone. The economic disparities were most persistently criticized, because they were the most difficult to remedy and were at the hear of social discord—although tribal rivalries, with their multiple entanglements of alliance, enmity, and vengeance, were no less serious, and the welding of these tribes into a political unity was an imperative need. Certain abuses of girls, orphans, and women, and the institution of slavery demanded desperate reform."
Author: Fazlur Rahman

17. "There is practically nothing that men do not prefer to God. A tiresome detail of business, an occupation utterly pernicious to health, the employment of time in ways one does not dare to mention. Anything rather than God."
Author: François Fénelon

18. "Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."
Author: George Bernard Shaw

19. "Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories are pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connection between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connection between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

20. "I know he is--sensitive--on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men."
Author: Jed Rubenfeld

21. "The feeling of righteousness is the core mood alteration among religious addicts. Religious addiction is a massive problem in our society. It may be the most pernicious of all addictions because it's so hard for a person to break his delusion and denial. How can anything be wrong with loving God and giving your life for good works and service to mankind?"
Author: John Bradshaw

22. "We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious art, stop 'taking it for what it's worth' as we take our fast foods, our overpriced cars that are no good, the overpriced houses we spend all our lives fixing, our television programs, our schools thrown up like barricades in the way of young minds, our brainless fat religions, our poisonous air, our incredible cult of sports, and our ritual of fornicating with all pretty or even horse-faced strangers. We would not put up with a debauched king, but in a democracy all of us are kings, and we praise debauchery as pluralism. This book is of course no condemnation of pluralism; but it is true that art is in one sense fascistic: it claims, on good authority, that some things are healthy for individuals and society and some things are not."
Author: John Gardner

23. "Taking the alphabet first and learning one letter a year for twenty-six years he will be able to read and write as early in life as he ought to. If we were more careful not to teach our children to read in their childhood we should not be so anxious about the effects of pernicious literature upon their adolescent morals."
Author: John Kendrick Bangs

24. "Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions ‘lay be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular."
Author: John Stuart Mill

25. "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."
Author: Joseph Heller

26. "It is because of the Biblical curse on man's search for knowledge, which has so paralyzed his mind during the past ages, and its detrimental effect upon progress, that makes the Bible the most wicked, the most detestable, the most pernicious, and the most obnoxious book ever published. It has been a curse to the human race.It is the duty of every brave and honest man and woman to do everything in his and her power to destroy the influence of this utterly stupid and vicious book, with its infantile concept of life and its nonsense concerning the universe. It is their duty to do everything within their power to stop its demoralizing and paralyzing influence upon the life of man.We will never achieve intellectual liberty until the wickedness of this book has been discarded with the belief in the flatness of the earth."
Author: Joseph Lewis

27. "Adulthood brings with it the pernicious illusion of control, perhaps even depends on it. I mean that mirage of dominion over our own life that allows us to feel like adults, for we associate maturity with autonomy, the sovereign right to determine what is going to happen to us next."
Author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez

28. "Ah!' said Michel, tempted, 'you have modern poems?' 'Of course. For instance, Martillac's 'Electric Harmonies,' which won a prize last year from the Academic of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's 'Meditations on Oxygen;' and we have the 'Poetic Parallelogram,' and even the 'Decarbonated Odes. . .'Michel couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied and overcome. Not even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age! Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! 'And such things are read,' he murmured as he hurried through the streets, ' perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves marked 'Literature.' But not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such things-where, if not the Library..."
Author: Jules Verne

29. "Burns from dropped matches, Ms. Lane? Matches one might have dropped while flirting with a perniciousFae, Ms. Lane? Have you any idea the value of this rug?"I didn't think his nostrils could flare any wider. His eyes were black flame. "Pernicious? Good grief, is Englishyour second language? Third?" Only someone who'd learned English from a dictionary would use such a word."Fifth," he snarled. "Answer me."
Author: Karen Marie Moning

30. "In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.Read more at"
Author: Leo Tolstoy

31. "A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no meansprevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forgearms when they need to fight."
Author: Leon Trotsky

32. "No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration."
Author: Martin Van Buren

33. "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."
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

34. "The newspaper articles that Joe had read about the upcoming Senate investigation into comic books always cited "escapism" among the litany of injurious consequences of their reading, and dwelled on the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life."
Author: Michael Chabon

35. "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."
Author: Pascal Mercier

36. "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."
Author: Richard Dawkins

37. "Of the value traps, the most widespread and pernicious is value rigidity. This is an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you MUST rediscover what you do as you go. Rigid values makes this impossible."
Author: Robert M. Pirsig

38. "It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful."
Author: Rudyard Kipling

39. "Love is the most pernicious drug of all. Let the romantics debate its existence. Pragmatists accept it and use it."
Author: Stephen King

40. "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."
Author: Steven Erikson

41. "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."
Author: Steven Pressfield

42. "Kitsch is much more than a question of style; it's a preference for consolation over truth. Disney's version of reality is not just cleaned up, it's pernicious. Unlike the best forms of art and philosophy, it undercuts the possibility of transformation because it portrays a world that's just fine as it is--or as it will be by the time the credits come up."
Author: Susan Neiman

43. "Back then I didn't know that I­­or anyone­­could make a life out of boyfriends and literature. As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have. The result was chronic emptiness and boredom. There were more pernicious results as well: self­loathing, alternating with "inappropriately intense anger with frequent displays of temper..."
Author: Susanna Kaysen

44. "South Africa was to evolve into the most pernicious example of the criminal practise of colonial and white minority domination."
Author: Thabo Mbeki

45. "Today we have a rebirth of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah. From seldom-read pages in dusty Bibles they come forth as real cities in a real world, depicting a real malady--pernicious permissiveness."
Author: Thomas S. Monson

46. "We all understand that the debasement of a nation's coinage is very pernicious and must prove disastrous to its commerce. How much more dangerous is the debasement of the spiritual coinage!"
Author: Virchand Gandhi

47. "I've wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. That ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most pernicious inclinations. What could be more stupid than to persist in carrying a burden that we constantly want to cast off, to hold our existence in horror, yet cling to it nonetheless, to fondle the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart?"
Author: Voltaire

48. "To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth."
Author: William Lloyd Garrison

49. "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"
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,You owe me no subscription: then let fallYour horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:But yet I call you servile ministers,That have with two pernicious daughters join'dYour high engender'd battles 'gainst a headSo old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!"
Author: William Shakespeare

Pernicious Quotes Pictures