80 Pernicious Quotes

Following is our list of pernicious quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about .

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Famous Pernicious Quotes

Ignorance is venomous and it murders the soul, spreading like a virus, running rampant, out of control. — Immortal Technique

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. — Plato

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. — Socrates

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing. — Pythagoras

Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul — Plato

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. — John Gardner

Hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide. — Kurt Vonnegut

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law. — James Baldwin

Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful. - Pope Francis

Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful. — Pope Francis

Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. — John W. Gardner

Yet the evil still increased, and, like the parasite of barnacles on a ship, if it did not destroy the structure, it obstructed its fair, comfortable progress in the path of life. — William Banting

Envy, the meanest of vices, creeps on the ground like a serpent. — Ovid

Freedom of belief is pernicious, it is nothing but the freedom to be wrong. — Robert Bellarmine

Deceivers are the most dangerous members of society. They trifle with the best affections of our nature, and violate the most sacred obligations. — George Crabbe

Short Pernicious Quotes

  • Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. — George Bernard Shaw
  • A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly — Andre Gide
  • All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious. — Ibn Warraq
  • Adulthood brings with it a pernicious illusion of control. — Juan Gabriel
  • In Germany democracy died by the headman's axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia. — Aneurin Bevan
  • Far from me be the gift of Bacchus--pernicious, inflaming wine, that weakens both body and mind. — Homer
  • Half-truths can be more pernicious than outright falsehoods. — Wendy Lesser
  • More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce. — Benjamin Disraeli
  • All forms of government are pernicious, including good government. — Edward Abbey
  • One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity. — Samuel Johnson

Philosophical Quotes

Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear. — Hippocrates

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. — Socrates

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine. — Bruce Lee

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. — Plato

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. — J. K. Rowling

There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend. - Socrates

There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend. — Socrates

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. — Baruch Spinoza

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free. — Aristotle

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More Pernicious Quotes

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

Three things too much, and three too little are pernicious to man; to speak much, and know little; to spend much, and have little; to presume much, and be worth little. — Miguel de Cervantes

Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys, Unfriendly to society's chief joys: Thy worst effect is banishing for hours The sex whose presence civilizes ours. — William Cowper

It is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects. — Anita Sarkeesian

The States is run by the Federal Reserve, an institution that answers only to itself and to a few large banks. It's modeled on the Bank of England. Ben Franklin said that one of the main reasons America revolted was to get away from the Bank of England, the mother of all central banks - the most pernicious and insidious of all. — Max Keiser

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

We are fully justified in valuing the life and person of an intended victim more highly than the life of a pernicious assailant. The attacker must be stopped. At once and completely. — Jeff Cooper

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth. — Jonathan Swift

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

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

The days of the Cross are counted. We must deliver the German nation from the pernicious influence of Christianity. — Erich Ludendorff

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

If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious. — Niccolo Machiavelli

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

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

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

Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrest his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly. — Andre Gide

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

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

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. — William Lloyd Garrison

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

We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

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. — Leo Tolstoy

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

Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. — Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

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 habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. — Bertrand Russell

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

Bob Dylan seems to me a totally pernicious influence - the nasal whine of death and masochism. Certainly, this would be a more cheerful world if there were no Dylan records in it. But Dylan and his audience mirror each other, and deserve each other; as Marx said, a morbid society creates its own morbid grave-diggers. — Robert Anton Wilson

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

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

There is, however, one other human right which is infrequently mentioned but which seems to be destined to become very important: this is the right, or the duty, of the individual to abstain from cooperating in activities which he considers wrong or pernicious. — Albert Einstein

You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation. — Stephen King

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

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

But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on guard against them. — Martin Luther

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