Quotes & Sayings About Pernicious

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. — Edgar Allan Poe

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. — Francois Fenelon

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

The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders, into intemperate and pernicious resolutions. — James Madison

The idea of the "job" as the answer to all woes, individual and social, is one of the most pernicious myths of modern society. It is promoted by politicians, parents, newspaper moralists and leaders of industry, on the left and on the right: paradise, they say, is "full employment. — Tom Hodgkinson

The offering of only one narrow slice of ourselves is especially pernicious on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, where we show others a glowing highlight reel of our lives, but hide the not-so-pretty behind-the-scenes parts. — Anonymous

Then she revived him with an ardor and skill he could not have imagined in the meager pleasures of his solitary lovemaking, and without glory deprived him of his virginity. He was fifty-two years old and she was twenty-three, but age was the least pernicious of the differences between them. They continued to make hurried, heartless siesta love in the evangelical shade of the orange trees. The madwomen encouraged them from the terraces with indecent songs, and celebrated their triumphs with stadium ovations. Before the Marquis was aware of the dangers that pursued him, Bernarda woke him from his stupor with the news that she was in the second month of pregnancy. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be
all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all. — Abraham Lincoln

If after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia. — William S. Burroughs

I wish you to understand that there is one man, and only one, for each woman, and one woman only for each man. When those two meet they fly together and are one through all the endless chain of existence. Until they meet all unions are mere accidents which have no meaning. Sooner or later each couple becomes complete. It may not be here. It may be in the next sphere where the sexes meet as they do on earth. Or it may be further delayed. But every man and every woman has his or her affinity, and will find it. Of earthly marriages perhaps one in five is permanent. The others are accidental. Real marriage is of the soul and spirit. Sex actions are a mere external symbol which mean nothing and are foolish, or even pernicious, when the thing which they should symbolize is wanting. Am I clear? — Arthur Conan Doyle

Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind. — John Quincy Adams

You're learning, friend.'
'The lessons of civilization.'
'Just so. 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 weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.'
'With words.'
'Indeedm with words. Form an opinion, say it ofren enough and pretty soon everyone's saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with a fight to the death. — Steven Erikson

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

The more I think of it, the more our ideas, our idols and our so-called holy practices, and those of our visions which supposedly are ineffable, all seem to me to be engendered merely by the stirrings of the human machine, exactly as is the wind from our nostrils or from our netherparts, and as is our sweat and salty water from tears, or the white blood passed in love, or the muddy excrement of the body. It enraged me to think that man should so waste his own substance in construction of theories that were almost always pernicious, and should speak of chastity before having examined the whole machinery of sex; that he should debate the question of free will instead of pondering the thousand obscure reasons which, for example, cause you to blink if I suddenly point a stick at your eyes; or that he should talk of Hell before having looked more closely into the question of death. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Burns from dropped matches, Ms. Lane? Matches one might have dropped while flirting with a pernicious
Fae, 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 English
your second language? Third?" Only someone who'd learned English from a dictionary would use such a word.
"Fifth," he snarled. "Answer me. — Karen Marie Moning

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

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

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

The earth isn't utopia and never will be
but insisting that we can feed nine billion people with organic food is nothing more than utopian extremism, and the most distressing and pernicious kind of denialism. An organic universe sounds delightful, but it would consign millions of people in Africa and throughout much of Asia to malnutrition and death. That is a risk everyone should be able to understand. — Michael Specter

No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right. — William Borah

sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. — George Eliot

Strikes deeper, grows with more pernicious root. — William Shakespeare

Atheism in legislation, indifference in matters of religion, and the pernicious maxims which go under the name of Liberal Catholicism are the true causes of the destruction of states; they have been the ruin of France. Believe me, the evil I denounce is more terrible than the Revolution, more terrible even than The Commune. I have always condemned Liberal Catholicism, and I will condemn it again forty times over if it be necessary. — Pope Pius IX

This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam - especially the pernicious meme "Islamophobia," by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. — Sam Harris

Let's move forward to try to address the most egregious and outrageous corrupting aspect of campaigns in America today and that is the incredible inundation of soft money and its pernicious effects. — John McCain

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

It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society. — David Hume

We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them. — Joseph Addison

The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images. Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. — Robert Dale Owen

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

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. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

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

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. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I'm well aware that millions of nominally Muslim freethinkers are in hiding out of necessity. This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam - especially the pernicious meme "Islamophobia," by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. What worries me is that so many moderate Muslims believe that "Islamophobia" is a bigger problem than literalist Islam is. They seem more outraged that someone like me would equate jihad with holy war than that millions of their co-religionists do this and commit atrocities as a result. — Sam Harris

I'm vile and perverted.
I'm obsessed and deranged.
I've existed for years but very little has changed.
I'm the tool of the government and industry too.
For I'm destined to rule and regulate you.
You may think I'm pernicious, but you can't look away.
I'll make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say.
I'm the best you can get ... have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozing out of your TV set ... — Frank Zappa

This creates a pernicious feedback loop. The policing itself spawns new data, which justifies more policing. And our prisons fill up with hundreds of thousands of people found guilty of victimless crimes. Most of them come from impoverished neighborhoods, and most are black or Hispanic. So even if a model is color blind, the result of it is anything but. In our largely segregated cities, geography is a highly effective proxy for race. — Cathy O'Neil

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 fall
Your 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'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! — William Shakespeare

But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men! — John Calvin

I look upon those who would deny others the right to urge and argue their position, however irksome and pernicious they may seem, as intellectual and moral cowards. — William Borah

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

Adulthood brings with it a pernicious illusion of control. — Juan Gabriel

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

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? — Vladimir Lenin

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

You see, as I go along, I've come to consider bravery as just about the most pernicious of virtues. Bravery is a horrible thing. The human race has it left over from the animal world and we can't get rid of it. — James Jones

The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong. — Robert Henri

It is no longer necessary to preach sonorously of the sinful and deleterious effect of liquor on the human mind and body; the essential evil is recognised scientifically, and only the sophistry of conscious immorality remains to be combated. Brewers and distillers still strive clumsily to delude the public by the transparent misstatements of their advertisements, and periodicals of easy conscience still permit these advertisements to disgrace their pages; but the end of such pernicious pretension is not remote. The drinker of yesterday flaunted his voice before all without shame; the average drinker of today must needs resort to excuses. — H.P. Lovecraft

I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. — Henry David Thoreau

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. — Aleister Crowley

This, to a busy mind like his, was a truly deplorable situation; and had he not been a man of inflexible morals and regular habits, there would have been great danger of his taking to politics or drinking - both which pernicious vices we daily see men driven to by mere spleen and idleness. — Washington Irving

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

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

also on June 22nd JB vetoes the Homestead Bill ... This bill, which proposes to give him ("the honest poor man," ... ) land at an almost nominal price, out of the property of the government, will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries. — John Updike

Behold, now, how foolish it is, in so great an abundance of the truest opinions which can be extracted from these words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses particularly meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, on account of which he hath spoken all the things whose words we endeavour to explain! — Augustine Of Hippo

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

The masses are crude, lame, 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 drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. — Emma Goldman

The woman who refuses to see her sexual organs as mere wood chips, designed to make the man's life more comfortable, is in danger of becoming a lesbian
an active, phallic woman, an intellectual virago with a fire of her own ... The lesbian body is a particularly pernicious and depraved version of the female body in general; it is susceptible to auto-eroticism, clitoral pleasure and self-actualization. — Sigmund Freud

Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed. — Henry VIII Of England

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. — Steven Pressfield

My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I — Ursula K. Le Guin

No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration. — Martin Van Buren

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. — John Kendrick Bangs

There is a pernicious notion held by many that being a submissive means being a victim or a doormat. The so-called Fifty Shades phenomenon gives this repulsive lie some very long legs, spreading it far and wide and giving it unwarranted credibility. This fallacy must be exposed for what it is. It is a despicable lie that mischaracterizes and tarnishes millions of good people living a healthy and enjoyable lifestyle. At the same time, it undermines the feminist cause, promotes rape culture, and ultimately revictimizes true victims of the very real problems of sexual abuse and violence in this country. — Michael Makai

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

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. — John Stuart Mill

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

Middle school is kind of like Middle-earth. It's a magical journey filled with elves, dwarves, hobbits, queens, kings, and a few corrupt wizards. Word to the wise: pick your traveling companions well. Ones with the courage and moral fiber to persevere. Ones who wield their lip gloss like magic wands when confronted with danger. This way, when you pass through the congested hallways rife with pernicious diversion, you achieve your desired destination - or at least your next class.
-CeCee, Lucy and CeCee's How to Survive (and Thrive) in Middle School — Kimberly Dana

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

Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public. — Arthur C. Clarke

Diversion is pernicious to depressives. Our lives are like waking dreams
correction, nightmares
where monsters chase us, never breaking off pursuit in order to rest or to eat or to look for easier prey. Diversion prevents us from confronting those monsters. If we never confront them, we have no hope of ever defeating them. Diversion does NOT work. — Northern Adams

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

Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored. — Gerry Spence

Let us be quite clear that the ideal is a paradox. Most of us, having grown up among the ruins of the chivalrous tradition, were taught in our youth that a bully is always a coward. Our first week at school refuted this lie, along with its corollary that a truly brave man is always gentle. It is a pernicious lie because it misses the real novelty and originality of the medieval demand upon human nature. Worse still, it represents as a natural fact something which is really a human ideal, nowhere fully attained, and nowhere attained at all without arduous discipline. It is refuted by history and Experience. Homer's Achilles knows nothing of the demand that the brave should also be the modest and the merciful. He kills men as they cry for quarter or takes them prisoner to kill them at leisure. — C.S. Lewis

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive. — William Shenstone

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

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

I think cultural criticism and long-form critique have their place and their purpose. But for a creator, it's so easy for the discussion surrounding a phenomenon to usurp the phenomenon itself. It's worse, of course, with comment sections on websites and blogs, particularly anonymous comments, or the incessant chatter and opinions on social media. Everyone gets to write a headline, and when you or the thing you do is being talked about, you get to feel like a headline - an addicting feeling for sure, but also a pernicious one. The discourse builds its own body, and it's usually a monster. — Carrie Brownstein

Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech. — George Carlin

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

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

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

The achievements of certain disadvantaged groups (Jews, say) and the continued struggles of others (for instance, blacks) led to pernicious assumptions about the stuff each group was made of. Those who found a way to emerge from the ghetto were said to possess the correct cultural values. — Anonymous

In this passage we are taught how hateful a thing is calumny in all free States, as, indeed, in every society, and how we must neglect no means which may serve to check it. And there can be no more effectual means for checking calumny than by affording ample facilities for impeachment, which is as useful in a commonwealth as the other is pernicious. And between them there is this difference, that calumny needs neither witness, nor circumstantial proof to establish it, so that any man may be calumniated by any other; but not impeached; since impeachment demands that there be substantive charges made, and trustworthy evidence to support them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power. — Emma Goldman

Tartuffe: For heaven's sake! Before you speak, I pray you take this handkerchief.
Dorine: Whatever do you mean?
Tartuffe: Cove your bosom. I can't bear to see it. Such pernicious sights give rise to sinful thoughts.
Dorine: You're mighty susceptible to temptation then! The flesh must make a great impression on you! I really don't know why you should get so excited. I can't say that I'm so easily roused. I could see you naked from head to foot and your whole carcass wouldn't tempt me in the least. — Moliere

According to the thesaurus... and according to me... there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for
the word
mean.
(I quickly yell the following words; the entire class flinches- including Will)
Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked,
hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.
And my personal favorite - asshole. — Colleen Hoover

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

Comics can be pernicious, fascist propaganda or anti-authoritarian. The ones that shaped me were particularly anti-authoritarian. — Art Spiegelman

The spiritual efficacy of all encounters is determined by the amount of personal ego that is in play. If two people meet and disagree fiercely about theological matters but agree, silently or otherwise, that God's love creates and sustains human love, and that whatever else may be said of God is subsidiary to this truth, then even out of what seems great friction there may emerge a peace that - though it may not end the dispute, though neither party may be "convinced" of the other's position - nevertheless enters and nourishes one's notion of, and relationship with, God. Without this radical openness, all arguments about God are not simply pointless but pernicious, for each person is in thrall to some lesser conception of ultimate truth and asserts not love but a lesson, not God but himself. — Christian Wiman

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

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time. — Larry Laudan

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest ... The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim. — George Washington

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

Failing to follow your dream is the most pernicious form of suicide. — Deborah L. Fruchey

Academia is alas full of special interests and specialists who presumed it was possible to "leapfrog" over this or that entire line of development. These minds hoped to distance themselves from the pernicious vices of a whole way of thinking, but of course at the same time excluded all of its virtues too. Modern abstractivism in its simplex form (which does not preclude a high degree of articulate facility within the ambit of what is preconceived and accepted). — Kenny Smith

Theological error is the most pernicious of errors; it strikes at man's center and separates him from his Creator and Redeemer. God insisted not only that Israelites should judge their own hearts and cast aside falsehood about Him but that they should also confront it wherever it emerged. — Max Anders

The most pernicious of his [Obama] proposals will be the massive Make Work Pay refundable tax credit. Dressed up as a tax cut, it will be a national welfare program, guaranteeing a majority of American households an annual check to 'refund' taxes they never paid. And it will eliminate the need for about 20% of American households to pay income taxes, lifting the proportion that need not do so to a majority of the voting population. — Dick Morris

Achievement was worthy of praise and honor, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state. — Tom Holland

I found the concept of hindsight bias fascinating, and incredibly important to management. One of the toughest problems a CEO faces is convincing managers that they should take on risky projects if the expected gains are high enough. Their managers worry, for good reason, that if the project works out badly, the manager who championed the project will be blamed whether or not the decision was a good one at the time. Hindsight bias greatly exacerbates this problem, because the CEO will wrongly think that whatever was the cause of the failure, it should have been anticipated in advance. And, with the benefit of hindsight, he always knew this project was a poor risk. What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves. — Richard H. Thaler