"Premature optimization is the root of all evil." -Donald Knuth
"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. A good programmer will not be lulled into complacency by such reasoning, he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code; but only after that code has been identified. It is often a mistake to make a priori judgments about what parts of a program are really critical, since the universal experience of programmers who have been using measurement tools has been that their intuitive guesses fail." - Donald Knuth
It's not "optimization is root of all evil". The key is "premature optimization". Maybe people gloss over that part, but it is right there.
Yes, Knuth goes into more detail on what he considers premature optimization in the context of programming computers. However the short sentence applies much more broadly in my experience.
For example, "premature optimization" of BOM costs in a hardware project can cost you dearly down the road when it turns out that leaving in some extra flexibility in the design would be mighty useful.
Premature X is bad.
Overusing X is bad.
These are true for most X. If it's not bad, then you didn't do it prematurely or overuse it!