No. Their reputation for poor performance mostly arises because the default data structure is a singly–linked list. Although the language makes these lists extremely convenient for the programmer to use, linked lists invariably result in terrible cache locality. High–performance systems that are written in lisp (and they do exist), achieve that performance by avoiding lists and using vectors and arenas instead.

Of course, it must be said that this performance penalty rarely matters in practice. For most programs, the limiting factor is not performance but the cost of implementation and maintenance. Lisp has has many powerful and convenient features that make implementation faster and surer than in any other language, and which usually greatly lower the cost of maintenance as well. Thus by writing a new program in Lisp you can get it off the ground and earning you money faster than you could in almost any other language. You can also add features more cheaply as time goes on, allowing you to keep up with your competitors. It is only when your system is nearing completion, and all necessary features have been invented and implemented, that you should think about rewriting select parts of that system in a systems language where more efficiency is possible. Not only will you only understand the system after it is written, but you can measure the actual performance of the system to figure out which parts you need to rewrite, and which parts have acceptable performance already and thus do not need to be rewritten.