Top 35 Perverse Quotes

In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.

Around the nation, lawmakers have drawn up their districts with such perverse precision and aversion to competition, that legislators rarely face competitive challenges.

Even as a child, Muhammad Ali got perverse pleasure out of being different. He liked the attention it got him, but most of all he just liked being himself: odd and independent.

The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern.

Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.

According to the perverse aesthetics of artistic guilty pleasure, certain books and movies are so bad – so crudely conceived, despicably motivated and atrociously executed – that they’re actually rather good.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.

Our electoral process has created perverse incentives that have warped our democracy and empowered special interests and a vocal minority.

I think there are two prevailing views of the suburbs in the States: either they’re this sort of tedious place, where everyone is the same, buys the same food and drives around in their little minivans, or the view is that the suburbs are extremely perverse in a humorous way.

I have a perverse attraction to risk. Not physical risk but emotional, financial risk – anything than can’t kill you immediately.

You can’t really win as a Booker judge. If you choose the obvious names, the unit-shifters, you’re accused of being timid and unimaginative; if you choose the unfamous, you’re labelled willful and perverse.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

I don’t know why actors are just attracted to really messed up people, but it almost makes it more fun, in a perverse way.

Fundamentally, I was a very shy and quiet person growing up, so it was just really difficult getting up on a stage. It was a perverse career choice really.

That’s the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain – they cannot be otherwise.

A risk-insensitive leverage ratio can be a useful backstop to risk-based capital requirements. But such a ratio can have perverse incentives if it is the binding capital requirement because it treats relatively safe activities, such as central clearing, as equivalent to the most risky activities.

Anything that was perverse and silly would be Kids in the Hall.

Our career path has tended to be the most perverse and contrary approach to the entertainment industry imaginable, while at the same time doing the kinds of things that you have to do, the videos, the photos and all that sort of stuff.

You’re under tremendous pressure, and everyone needs you to be perfect all the time, and that often creates a perverse incentive to not tell the truth. Please remember – when you get caught not telling the truth, it’s over.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn’t want to go down that route.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

Someone at Hollywood Records said, ‘Are you into Alanis Morissette?’ I said ‘Yeah, she sells 26 million albums, of course. It would be perverse if she works with me, but I don’t think you can get her.’ A week later they say she’s coming down the studio.

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London – those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport – is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.

The truth is that those who join gangs – more often than not they are young men in their later teens – often do come from the most difficult family backgrounds, from an environment where they feel neglected and unwanted. Gang membership can bring a perverse sense of belonging which they may not have ever got at home.

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein are clearly deplorable. No matter how many great films he’s bullied into production, or his guilt-induced contributions to left-minded ideals, this kind of intimidation and abuse of power is perverse and utterly unforgivable. Period.

I’m very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I’m instantly disinclined to do so.

I guess I feel so tortured most of the time, when I see someone else feeling tortured, I get a little perverse glee out of it.

I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they’ll run the other way.

I’m fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There’s something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.

I’m often reassured in a bizarre – perhaps perverse – way when I find in the archive stuff that contradicts what my assumptions have been. That’s interesting and exciting.

Language is very important. If you are condoning acts of terror… you are giving credibility to a view that is perverse and is wrong.

I don’t necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It’s caring about something that’s utterly meaningless.