Ivan Illich Quotes
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn’t organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
Quotes to Explore
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I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.
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The problem with most children's hospitals is that they are passive. They are high quality. They are filled with the best doctors. But their function is to wait until kids get sick and get referred in.
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I took this 'how to build computers' course basically because I'm sick and tired of getting ripped off by cheesy computer companies. Software baffles me. I like hardware. I used to change my own oil, and now I want to build my own computer so I can have what I want.
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You're not sick you're just in love.
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A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship - and you know what, a father does, too. It's time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a 'Mad Men' episode.
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This is alchemy, and this is the office of Vulcan; he is the apothecary and chemist of the medicine.
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I had learned of Gertrude Stein's bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.
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I really don't know where my interest in death comes from. Maybe I've just got a twisted imagination. The truth is, I haven't had a hugely eventful life - maybe I'm compensating in my creative life. Or maybe I'm just a bit sick.
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I'm a human being, and I get sick.
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So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
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To me, politics is an extension of what I do in medicine.
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I'm sick of running away from things.
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I don't like clothes. I don't especially like cars. I have a very nice house. I get sick on a boat.
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We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do.
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I grew up in a small town where we played around on motorcycles and things, but it really started when I got old enough. I think I was obsessed with the culture of riding. I got sick of having to date guys who rode motorcycles for me to be on them.
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I entered medicine to use it as a vehicle for social change.
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Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended at all even to take in the whole sick population.
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In these ways the war in Vietnam is poisoning and brutalizing our domestic life. Psychological incompatibility has proven to be more controlling than financial feasibility, and the Great Society has become a sick society.
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To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.
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I'm very concerned because I think the Jews want to drive the elephants to extinction because the trunk of an elephant reminds them of an uncircumcised penis. I'm absolutely serious about that... Jews are sick, they're mental cases.
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Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
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I naturally want to be provocative.
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The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.
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Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn’t organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
