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Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich Quotes

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Famous Ivan Illich Quotes

“In an advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work. The infrastructure of society is arranged so that only the job gives access to the tools of production...Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents.”

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Author:Ivan Illich
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“An ever growing part of our major institutions’ functions is the cultivation and maintenance of three sets of illusions which turn the citizen into a client to be saved by experts...The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.”

EducationEconomicsInstitutionsValueConsumerismAutonomyUsefulnessIllusions
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services....What people do or make but will not or cannot put up for sale is as immeasurable and as invaluable for the economy as the oxygen they breathe.”

EconomicsValueConsumerism
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. autonomous activity threatens the employment level, generates deviance, and detracts​ from the GNP...Work no longer means the creation of a value perceived by the worker but mainly a job, which is a social relationship. Unemployment means sad idleness, rather than the freedom to do things that are useful for oneself or for one's neighbour. An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is distinguished from a woman who 'works,' no matter how useless or damaging the product of this work might be.”

WorkFreedomSocietyValueEmploymentAutonomyUsefulnessGdpChildrearingGnp
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“We are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only -- 'to learn' becomes 'to accumulate credits'.”

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Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“The world-wide discrimination against the autodidact has vitiated many people's confidence in determining their own goals and needs. But the same discrimination has also resulted in a multiplicity of growing minorities who are infuriated by this insidious dispossession.”

LearningConfidenceDiscriminationSelf Directed EducationSelf Direction
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“Man's consciously lived fragility, individuality and relatedness make the experience of pain, of sickness and of death an integral part of his life. The ability to cope with this trio autonomously is fundamental to his health. As he becomes dependent on the management of his intimacy, he renounces his autonomy and his health must decline.”

SocietyHealthDiseaseMedicineIllnessInstitution
Book:Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health
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“In the Middle Ages there was no salvation outside the Church, and the theologians had a hard time explaining what God did with those pagans who were visibly virtuous or saintly. Similarly, in contemporary society effort is not productive unless it is done at the behest of a boss, and economists have a hard time dealing with the obvious usefulness of people when they are outside the corporate control of a corporation, volunteer agency, or labour camp.”

EffortVirtueSocietyEconomicsProductivityTheologyEmploymentUsefulness
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“Beyond a certain speed, motorized vehicles create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all and shrink them for only a few. A new dirt road through the wilderness brings the city within view, but not within reach, of most Brazilian subsistence farmers. The new expressway expands Chicago, but it sucks those who are well-wheeled away from a downtown that decays into a ghetto.”

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Book:Energy and Equity
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“Avec un vélo, l'homme peut partager les bienfaits d'une conquête technique sans prétendre régenter les horaires, l'espace ou l'énergie d'autrui. Un cycliste est maître de sa propre mobilité sans empiéter sur celle des autres. Ce nouvel outil ne crée que des besoins qu'il peut satisfaire, au lieu que chaque accroissement de l'accélération produit par des véhicules à moteur crée de nouvelles exigences de temps et d'espace.”

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Book:Energy and Equity
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“The exhaustion and pollution of earth's resource is, above all, the result of man's self-image, of a regression in his consciousness. Some would like to speak about a mutation of collective consciousness which leads to a conception of a man as an organism dependent not on nature and individuals, but rather on institutions. This institutionalization of substantive values, this belief that a planned process of treatment ultimately gives results desired by the recipient, this consumer ethos, is at the heart of the Promethean fallacy. Efforts to find a new balance in the global milieu depend on the deinstitutionalization of values.”

ValuesEducationConsumer SocietyInstitutionalizationEcological Consciousness
Book:Deschooling Society
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“A universidade moderna confere o privilégio de discordar apenas aos que foram testados e classificados como potenciais homens de dinheiro ou detentores de poder. Ninguém recebe um centavo dos fundos fiscais para formar-se nas horas vagas ou para educar outros, a não ser que possa comprová-lo com um certificado. As escolas escolhem para os estágios seguintes aqueles que, nos primeiros estágios do jogo, provaram ser bons investimentos para a ordem estabelecida.”

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Book:Deschooling Society
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“I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.”

WayBelieveActionChoicesI BelieveTechnologySupportEnvironmentStyleProduceDependsIndependentInstitutionsLifestyleIdeologyDevelopingRelatedStationsPollutionConsumptionConsumerismSpontaneousDesirableMaintainingOverconsumptionOur ChoicesBe Spontaneous
Author:Ivan Illich
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“A low-energy policy allows for a wide choice of life-styles and cultures. If, on the other hand, a society opts for high energy consumption, its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labeled capitalist or socialist.”

IfsHandsChoicesCultureEnergySocialStylePolicyLowsRelationWideAlternativesCapitalistConsumptionSocialistDegradingLife StyleEnergy PolicyHigh EnergySocial RelationsEnergy Consumption
Author:Ivan Illich
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“Even if nonpolluting power were feasible and abundant, the use of energy on a massive scale acts on society like a drug that is physically harmless but psychically enslaving. A community can choose between Methadone and "cold turkey"-between maintaining its addiction to alien energy and kicking it in painful cramps-but no society can have a population that is hooked on progressively larger numbers of energy slaves and whose members are also autonomously active.”

IfsUseEnergyCommunityNumbersColdDrugMembersSlaveAddictionPopulationPainfulActiveScalesAliensAlternativesMassiveTurkeysMaintainingKickingHookedCrampsKicking ItCold TurkeyMethadone
Author:Ivan Illich
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“I intend to discuss some perplexing issues which are raised once we embrace the hypothesis that society can be deschooled; to search for criteria which may help us distinguish institutions which merit development because they support learning in a deschooled milieu; and to clarify those personal goals which would foster the advent of an Age of Leisure (schole) as opposed to an economy dominated by service industries.”

MayHelpingAgeGoalSupportEconomyIssuesDevelopmentIndustryInstitutionsEmbraceRaisedMeritLeisureHypothesisCriteriaAdventScholesMilieuPersonal GoalService Industry
Author:Ivan Illich
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“Latin America can no longer tolerate being a haven for United States liberals who cannot make their point at home, an outlet for apostles too "apostolic" to find their vocation as competent professionals within their own community. The hardware salesman threatens to dump second-rate imitations of parishes, schools and catechisms -- out-moded even in the United States -- all around the continent. The traveling escapist threatens further to confuse a foreign world with his superficial protests, which are not viable even at home.”

WorldStatesHomeSchoolAmericaCommunityUnitedUnited StatesHavensRateProtestLatinContinentsTolerateImitationSuperficialVocationOutletsApostlesCompetentLatin AmericaSalesmanDumpHardwareSecond RateParishApostolicEscapistsCatechism
Author:Ivan Illich
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“We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt.”

ThinkingWorldWayGovernmentDesireHumanityWishSocialCommonLeaderBreakGroupsShareEconomicStudentsModelsGuiltEnvironmentalWorkersExecutivesDividesProfessorsPrivilegedStewardshipObsoleteEconomic Systems
Author:Ivan Illich
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“We have failed...through our lack of responsible awareness...and thus added to suffering around the world. All of us are cripples-some physically, some mentally, some emotionally. We must, therefore, strive cooperatively to create a new world. There is no time left for destruction, for hatred, for anger. We must build, in hope and joy and celebration.”

WorldJoySufferingLeftAwarenessDestructionHatredResponsibleEnvironmentalStriveAround The WorldNew WorldCelebrationStewardshipCripplesTime Left
Author:Ivan Illich
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“The goals of development are always and everywhere stated in terms of consumer value packages standardized around the North Atlantic-and therefore always and everywhere imply more privileges for a few... Underdevelopment is the result of a state of mind common to both socialist and capitalist countries. Present development goals are neither desirable nor reasonable. Unfortunately antiimperialism is no antidote.”

MindCountryStatesValuesGoalTermResultsCommonDevelopmentPrivilegeConsumersReasonableState Of MindCapitalistSocialistConsumerismDesirablePackagesAntidoteOverconsumptionUnderdevelopment
Author:Ivan Illich
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“The knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the knowledge of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is objective - defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined... and fed into a process, now called decision-making. This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people.”

PeopleGovernmentValuesIndividualProcessDecisionOpinionPolicyCitizensMythologyObjectivesDefinedFormerExpertsLatterDecision MakingFedsManipulationCommoditySubjectiveGovernanceRelianceRefinedExcludedErode
Author:Ivan Illich
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“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.”

CareValuesSocialCommunityImaginationRaceAcceptingSecurityMilitaryPoliceSafetyProtectionMedicalImprovementHealth CareProductiveTreatmentMistakenRatsNational SecuritySocial WorkPupilsSchooledPoiseRat RaceMedical TreatmentProductive WorkPolice Protection
Book:The Dawn of Epimethean Man, and Other Essays
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