Quotes about recommendation
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John E. Sununu photo
Roger Ebert photo

“But now here is the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/southland-tales-2007 of Southland Tales (16 November 2007)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Adam Smith photo

“The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 894.

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Ha-Joon Chang photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“I would tell them of my own intention to keep my counsel…and I will venture to recommend them, as an old Parliamentary hand, to do the same.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jan/21/first-eight in the House of Commons (21 January 1886).
1880s

“You should always book tradesmen by personal recommendation.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101, The News Quiz

Kazimir Malevich photo

“I recommend [the students] that you should work actively at the Hermitage and study the artistic structures of Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Watteau, Poussin, and other painters, even Chardin, where he is an artist. Study very closely their dabbing manner of execution and try to copy a small piece of canvas, just one square inch.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote in a letter of Malevich to his student Yudin, summer of 1924; as quoted in Marc Chagall – the Russian years 1906 – 1922, ed. By Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 66
1921 - 1930

Farah Pahlavi photo

“I try to forget about the bitter past as I [also] recommend for my fellow countrymen. I do not live in the past, I live in the present, always hoping for a brighter future. This is my message to all my countrymen.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Interview: Farah Pahlavi Recalls 30 Years In Exile http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Farah_Pahlavi_Recalls_30_Years_In_Exile/2111354.html, Radio Free Europe, (July 27, 2010).
Interviews

Calvin Coolidge photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
M. S. Swaminathan photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
George Hendrik Breitner photo

“I started reading Flaubert's 'Salambô'. The first chapter was very strong. I prefer Flaubert above Zola, the Concourt even more. No doubt you know the Concourts, Edm. and Jules, two brothers. 'Manette Salomon' is one of their most beautiful creations. If you could read that, I believe you do me and yourself a great pleasure. The type of Chassagnol, the man who understands so much about Art - yes, he has the purest ideas on art of all - I find [him] adorable. He understands everything and that's why he can not be an artist himself or the greatest. I recommend that book to anyone, layman or painter and I will buy it myself.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik ben begonnen met Flaubert's Salambô te lezen. 't eerste hoofdstuk was verduveld kranig. Flaubert bevalt me beter dan Zola, de Concourt nog meer. Zonder twijfel kent U de Concourt, Edm. en Jules, twee broers. Manette Salomon vind ik een van hun mooiste scheppingen. Als U dat eens las zou U mij en Uzelf geloof ik een groot genoegen doen. De type van Chassagnol de man die zooveel begrijpt van Kunst, ja er 't zuiverste denkbeeld over heeft van allen, vind ik aanbiddelijk. Hij begrijpt alles en kan daardoor zelf geen kunstenaar zijn of de grootste. Ik beveel dat boek aan iedereen aan, leek of schilder en zal 't me koopen.
Quote of Breitner in his letter to A.P. van Stolk, 15 Nov. 1881; as cited in Breitner en Parijs – master-thesis 9928758 https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/8382], by Jacobine Wieringa, Faculty of Humanities Theses, Utrecht, (translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek) pp. 10-11
before 1890

Peter D. Schiff photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“So what I would like to recommend is – if we are going to have continued dialogue – we will work out the wall. They are going to say, “who is going to pay for the wall, Mr. President?” to both of us, and we should both say, “we will work it out.” It will work out in the formula somehow. As opposed to you saying, “we will not pay” and me saying, “we will not pay.””

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full transcripts of Trump’s calls with Mexico and Australia By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum; Aug. 3, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.95d2f93766d6 (Friday, January 27, 2017)
2010s, 2016, January

John Bright photo

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Arun Shourie photo

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Charles Boarman photo
Robert Crumb photo
George F. Kennan photo
Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Kent Hovind photo
Carrie Fisher photo

“I Googled myself without lubricant. I don't recommend it.”

Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American actress, screenwriter and novelist

on The Late Show with David Letterman http://www.u.tv/Entertainment/This-week-Jane-Andrews-Katie-Price-Terry-Herbert-and-Fred-Johnson/1081bd97-6ce5-40eb-9a2a-4abfee5d48a6

Ernest Hemingway photo
Caldwell Esselstyn photo
Karl Mannheim photo
Dick Cheney photo

“What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Vice Presidential Debate October 5, 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3718956.stm http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6187803/
2000s, 2004

“First of all, no one can accuse me, Ayad Jamal Aldin, of secatarianism, because I support a secular regime that fully separates religion and the state. […] I believe that my freedom as a Shia and as a religious person will never be complete unless I preserve the freedom of the Sunni, the Christian, the Jew, the Sabai and the Yazidi. We will not be able to preserve the freedom of the mosque unless we preserve the freedom of entertainment clubs. […] The curricula - both the modern ones, in some Arab and Islamic countries, and the books of jurisprudence and heritage - have many flaws that must be fixed once and for all. There are rulings about Ahl al-Dhimma - even if, Allah be praised, no current regime can enforce these rulings. However, just for the sake of amusement and diversion, I recommend that the viewers read the books of jurisprudence, and see how Ahl al-Dhimma are treated. I especially recommend this to people with a lust for Arab and Islamic history, who claim that our history is a source of pride, and that others were treated with kindness and love - especially Christians and Jews. Among these rulings, a Dhimmi must wear a belt, so he would be identifiable. Moreover, it is recommended that he be forced to the narrowest paths, and there are even jurisprudents who say that it is recommended to slap a Christian on the back of his neck so he would feel humiliated and degraded. This is how we harass him and then invite him to join Islam. I can swear that the Prophet Muhammad is innocent of such inhuman jurisprudence. I challenge anyone among the people with a lust for history to talk candidly to the West, to the advocates of human rights, and tell them that our heritage has such evils and flaws. We are a nation of blackout and darkness. We cannot live in the light of day. […] We do not hold ourselves accountable. This is why America came to demand that the Arabs be accountable. We must have more self-confidence and be accountable before others hold us accountable. We must discipline ourselves before the Americans and English discipline us. We must maintain human rights, which we have neglected for 1,300 or 1,400 years, to this day - until the arrival of the Americans, the Christians, the English, the Zionists, the Crusaders - call them what you will. They came to teach you, the followers of Muhammad, how to respect human rights.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: The Arabs Want Tyrannical Regimes, in Line with Their Backward Culture, LBC TV, July 31, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZKffu6Wsg,

George Saintsbury photo

“Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.”

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

Vol. 3, p. 611
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day

Jane Austen photo

“I would recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1817-02-20) on Mrs. Deedes having an eighteenth child [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Adam Smith photo
Elliott Smith photo

“[when asked about cigarettes] I don't recommend them… but I smoke them.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N33SPjRvgpQ

Walter Dill Scott photo
Anu Partanen photo
Michael Chabon photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Mortimer J. Adler photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“If the economy of today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase if that were necessary.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)" (14 December 1962)<!-- Public Papers of the President: John F. Kennedy, 1962 -->
1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)

Richard Stallman photo
James Fallows photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Ryōji Noyori photo

“Keep stupid, keep crazy. Knowledge begins with wonder. Success as a scientist is based on keen curiosity. If one wants to enjoy academic life, I would recommend him or her to be different.”

Ryōji Noyori (1938) Japanese chemist

Ryōji Noyori (2018) cited in " Diverse culture, free environment keys for Nobel prizes: Nobel winner http://focustaiwan.tw/news/ast/201805090001.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 9 May 2018.

Sueton photo

“He answered some governors who had written to recommend an increase in the burden of provincial taxation, with: "A good shepherd shears his flock; he does not flay them."”
Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit boni pastoris esse tondere pecus, non deglubere.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Tiberius, Ch. 32

Adam Smith photo
Augustus De Morgan photo

“If much difficulty should be experienced in the elementary chapters, I know of no work which I can so confidently recommend to be used with the present one, as that of M. Duhamel.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Duhamel, Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Polytechnique. Paris, Bachelier. vol i 1841 vol. ii. 1840.
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Gulzarilal Nanda photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Adam Smith photo

“In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. …
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Paul Krugman photo

“The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a "liquidity trap"; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.
The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, "priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed.”

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

Benjamin Rush photo
Otto Lilienthal photo
John Wesley photo

“As to matters of dress, I would recommend one never to be first in the fashion nor the last out of it.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 127
General sources

Walter Dill Scott photo
Ali Meshkini photo
Camille Pissarro photo

“P. S. If you happen to see Seurat or if you write to Signac, tell them that I have tried the mixture of cadmium (well recommended by Contet), with red, white and Veronese green. It becomes black in four or five days from the Veronese green. Even blacker than the chrome yellow mixture. Tell this to Contet.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Paris, 31 May, 1887, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 114
1880's

Ogden Nash photo
Peter Medawar photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo
Tiberius photo

“To the governors who recommended burdensome taxes for his provinces, he [Tiberius] wrote in answer that it was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it.”
Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit boni pastoris esse tondere pecus non deglubere.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, III. Tiberius, Ch. 32; translation by J. C. Rolfe
Latter component of the quotation often paraphrased as Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere.
Indirect quotations

Horace photo

“Look round and round the man you recommend,
For yours will be the shame should he offend.”

Qualem commendes, etiam atque etiam aspice, ne mox incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem.

Book I, epistle xviii, line 76 (translated by John Conington).
Variant translation: Study carefully the character of the one you recommend, lest his misdeeds bring you shame.
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

William Whipple photo

“A recommendation is gone thither for raising some regiments of Blacks. This, I suppose will lay a foundation for the emancipation of those wretches in that country. I hope it will be the means of dispensing the blessings of Freedom to all the human race in America.”

William Whipple (1730–1785) American signatory of the Declaration of Independence

As quoted in "This Was a Man" http://www.whipple.org/william/thiswasaman.html, by Dorothy Mansfield Vaughan

Nathanael Greene photo

“Hitherto our principal difficulty has arose from a want of proper supplies of money, and from the inefficacy of that which we obtained; but now there appears a scene opening which will introduce new embarrassments. The Congress have recommended to the different States to take upon themselves the furnishing certain species of supplies for our department. The recommendation falls far short of the general detail of the business, the difficulty of ad justing which, between the different agents as well as the different authorities from which they derive their appointments, I am very apprehensive will introduce some jarring interests, many improper disputes, as well as dangerous delays. Few persons, who have not a competent knowledge of this employment, can form any tolerable idea of the arrangements necessary to give despatch and success in discharging the duties of the office, or see the necessity for certain relations and dependencies. The great exertions which are frequently necessary to be made, require the whole machine to be moved by one common interest, and directed to one general end. How far the present measures, recommended to the different States, are calculated to promote these desirable purposes, I cannot pretend to say; but there appears to me such a maze, from the mixed modes adopted by some States, and about to be adopted by others, that I cannot see the channels, through which the business may be conducted, free from disorder and confusion.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (January 1780)

Rick Rashid photo

“If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago.”

Rick Rashid (1951) American computer scientist, Microsoft vice president

Microsoft researcher talks tools, telescope, and iPhone http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10077953-56.html in CNET (29 October 2008)

“I have tried to lead my life by following a belief that has guided my passage. This I sincerely recommend for all to follow: to witness an injustice and do nothing--that is the biggest crime.”

Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran) (1910–1995) American labor activist

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey http://www.larkspring.com/Kid/Contents.html (1993).
The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

Anton Chekhov photo
Alfred Hitchcock photo

“We do not recommend suicide as a way of life.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 1965.

Musa al-Kadhim photo

“Everything has a tax, and the tax for the bodies is recommended fasting.”

Musa al-Kadhim (745–799) Seventh of the Twelve Imams and regarded by Sunnis as a renowned scholar

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 425.
Religious Wisdom

Herbert A. Simon photo

“Now the salient characteristic of the decision tools employed in management science is that they have to be capable of actually making or recommending decisions, taking as their inputs the kinds of empirical data that are available in the real world, and performing only such computations as can reasonably be performed by existing desk calculators or, a little later electronic computers. For these domains, idealized models of optimizing entrepreneurs, equipped with complete certainty about the world - or, a worst, having full probability distributions for uncertain events - are of little use. Models have to be fashioned with an eye to practical computability, no matter how severe the approximations and simplifications that are thereby imposed on them…
The first is to retain optimization, but to simplify sufficiently so that the optimum (in the simplified world!) is computable. The second is to construct satisficing models that provide good enough decisions with reasonable costs of computation. By giving up optimization, a richer set of properties of the real world can be retained in the models… Neither approach, in general, dominates the other, and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: 1960s-1970s, "Rational decision making in business organizations", Nobel Memorial Lecture 1978, p. 498; As cited in: Arjang A. Assad, ‎Saul I. Gass (2011) Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and Innovators. p. 260-1.

“Taylor's method… has no recommendation from its neatness and perspicuity, but is justly censured by John Bernoulli for its obscure conciseness.”

Robert Woodhouse (1773–1827) English mathematician

A Treatise on Isoperimetrical Problems, and the Calculus of Variations (1810)

David Hume photo
John Gray photo
Kent Hovind photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

In response to a journalist who asked about Russian abuses in Chechnya during a press conference in November 2002 Newsbusters http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/12/30/ouch-putin-answer-about-terrorism-stuns-press-conference-silence#ixzz2Wxbq9sOU
2000 - 2005

Matthew Arnold photo
Tertullian photo

“Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another.”
Infirma commendatio est quae de alterius destructione fulcitur.

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Adversus Marcionem, IV.15.5

Marion Nestle photo
John Calvin photo

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

Kent Hovind photo
Umberto Veronesi photo
William Alcott photo
Dean Ornish photo

“In addition to preventing many chronic diseases … comprehensive lifestyle changes can often reverse the progression of these illnesses. … Changing lifestyle actually changes your genes—turning on genes that keep you healthy, and turning off genes that promote heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and diabetes—more than five hundred genes in only three months. People often say, “Oh, it's all in my genes. There's not much I can do about it.” But there is. Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating—not to blame, but to empower. … [Our approach is] not like there was one set of dietary recommendations for reversing heart disease, a different one for reversing diabetes, and yet another for changing your genes or lengthening your telomeres. In all of our studies, people were asked to consume a whole-foods, plant-based diet … It's as though your body knows how to personalize the medicine it needs if you give it the right raw materials in your diet and lifestyle. … And what's good for you is good for our planet. To the degree we transition toward a whole-foods, plant-based diet, it not only makes a difference in our own lives; it also makes a difference in the lives of many others across the globe.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=KfeoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PP12 to Marco Borges, The 22-Day Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2015).

Albrecht Thaer photo
Eric Maskin photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo