Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the distribution of access to these commodities. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers.

Ivan Illich
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The soul is healed by being with children. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  2. Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue). - Jess C. Scott

  3. Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. - Cornel West

  4. I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do – to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited... - Jess C. Scott

  5. Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. - Albert Camus

More Quotes By Ivan Illich
  1. 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.

  2. School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.

  3. School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

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of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only -- 'to learn' becomes 'to accumulate credits'.

  5. Today, one must either be isolated and cut off, or a carefully guarded, affluent drop-out, to allow one's children to play in an environment where they listen to people rather than to stars, speakers, or instructors. All over the world, one can see the rapid...

Related Topics