Ivan Illich Quotes

If there is an interpreter sitting between two friends, he may be able to translate the words but not the feelings with which I say something.

We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.

The spirit of seeking understanding through personal contact with people of other nations and other cultures deserves the respect and support of all.

In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.

You need not wonder at my knowing all human languages; for, to tell you the truth, I also understand all the secrets of human silence.

Our people could not talk with these white-faced men, but they used signs which all people understand.

I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude.

I've been to Africa three times. All right? You can't bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can't bring it into fundamental Islam.

The best education I have ever received was through travel.

The fact that television and tourism have made the whole world accessible has created the illusion that we enjoy intimate knowledge of other places, when we barely scratch their surface. For the vast majority, the knowledge of Thailand or Sri Lanka acquired through tourism consists of little more than the whereabouts of the beach.

One of the aims of higher education is to broaden perspectives, and what better way than by a home stay in a really different country, like Bangladesh or Senegal? Time abroad also leaves one more aware of the complex prism of suspicion through which the United States is often viewed.

I got exposed to so many different cultures and people.

I have a great relationship with the Mexican people.

I got over the whole British eating-with-hands phobia very quickly when I was working with Oxfam in Tanzania.

I travel all over the world and teach people.

I understand different cultures because I have travelled a lot.

There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.

Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations

We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven.

The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy-the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. The simple purpose of the exchange program...is to erode the culturally rooted mistrust that sets nations against one another. The exchange program is not a panacea but an avenue of hope.

I've actually spent about half of my life overseas in the third world. I grew up in Tanzania, East Africa, and later lived in South-West Asia. In general, everywhere I go, I am treated with great respect and hospitality, but I need to be sensitive to cultural, tribal and ethical customs of the local people. In this modern era of technology, I think we forget that the most important thing when traveling is to listen and learn, and establish relationship, and not be hidden behind technology like Goretex, emails, satellite phones, and insulated from the people around you.

Everyone can help. We can educate ourselves and our children about other countries and cultures.

No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.