Ivan Illich Quotes

The right to an education is still not present in our Constitution.

No country can ever flourish or make its mark as a nation, as long as the principle of (educational) compulsion is absent

After a child has arrived at the legal age for attending school,-whether he be the child of noble or of peasant,-the only two absolute grounds of exemption from attendance are sickness and death.

American education is still the wonder of the world, and we must open the schoolhouse doors, not close them.

I knew that I was smart enough to learn. I knew that I could learn, if I could just go to school and not hear gunshots.

In some parts of the world, students are going to school every day. It's their normal life. But in other part of the world, we are starving for education... it's like a precious gift. It's like a diamond.

Every child should have the opportunity to receive a quality education.

Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

It disturbs me when Obama says in the State of the Union address that he wants to make dropping out of school at 18 illegal, because people learn differently and before there are forms of learning for every type of person in the world, we shouldn't be condemned for leaving.

There are so many people around the world in need of high-quality education and really starving for education.

I believe that it is girls' human rights to go to school to be educated, minimum, until they are 18.

So, the struggle for equal educational opportunity continues.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

The point we must aim at is to obtain admittance for our children to the nearest and the best schoolhouse.

I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. ... If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school?

… schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Schools that are freely accessible allow the organization of certain specific learning tasks which a person might propose to himself. Schools, when they are compulsory - as we see at this moment in the United States - create a dazed population, a 'learned' population, a mentally pretentious population, such as we have never seen before.

What I see is democratizing education will change everything.

I don't think a good education should be confined to a privileged few.

To expose the hardships experienced by children who are deprived of the right to attend school, Camfed has produced a series of films about educational exclusion. 'Every Child Belongs in School' provides a glimpse into the lives of children who have been forced by poverty to leave school at a very young age and take a difficult life path.

I believe you have a birthright to a good education.

When millions of kids are missing out on school, delivering educational services becomes an issue that concerns the humanitarian system.

I wish it were true that every child had access to an education that helped them reach their full potential.

There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.