Quote

Man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them.

Ivan Illich

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ivan Illich
Age: 76 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 4
Died: 2002
Died: December 2
Anthropologist
Catholic Priest
Historian
Literary Critic
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Ivan D. Illich
Ivan Dominic Illich
Men
Choose
Rich
Whether
Freedom
Use
Must
Things

More quotes by Ivan Illich

Image
Culture makes pain tolerable by interpreting it's necessity only pain perceived as curable is intolerable.
Ivan Illich
Image
School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.
Ivan Illich
Image
It is really an alienation to believe that learning is the result of teaching.
Ivan Illich
Image
School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Ivan Illich
Image
If you want to change society then you must tell an alternative story.
Ivan Illich
Image
Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being with it, yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.
Ivan Illich
Image
I was recently told, 'You're a liar!' when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there.
Ivan Illich
Image
Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves they demand to be managed.
Ivan Illich
Image
Learning from programmed information always hides reality behind a screen.
Ivan Illich
Image
Leadership does not depend on being right.
Ivan Illich
Image
The State shall make no law with respect to the establishment of education.
Ivan Illich
Image
Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.
Ivan Illich
Image
The depersonalizati on of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.
Ivan Illich
Image
The new experience that has replaced dignified suffering is artificially prolonged, opaque, depersonalized maintenance.
Ivan Illich
Image
We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.
Ivan Illich
Image
The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.
Ivan Illich
Image
School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.
Ivan Illich
Image
We can only live changes: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create.
Ivan Illich
Image
School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.
Ivan Illich
Image
Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.
Ivan Illich