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Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Ivan Illich Quotes

“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of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only -- 'to learn' becomes 'to accumulate credits'.”

LanguageEducationLearningSatisfactionConsumptionEducational Philosophy
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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“It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they "speak with the accent of natives" they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.”

PeopleArtSpeakDifficultSoundEffortSilenceForeverLearningSpecialCommunicateMilesMore TimeAccentsSilence IsGrammarDelicacyMiles AwaySpecial Gifts
Book:Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation
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