Ivan Illich Quotes

I had never understood why the farmlands of the U.S. had been settled in such a sparse and isolated way, whereas the farming communities in Europe seemed closer, more convivial, centered around village life.

Long, long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.

Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.

Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.

Historically, if you look at people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, people with disposable incomes have always been agricultural innovators.

The agricultural revolution transformed the earth and changed the fate of humanity. It produced an entirely new mode of subsistence, which remains the foundation of the global economy to this day.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Industrial agriculture freed many people to pursue lives their parents and grandparents could never have. It made America modern.

The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers up front.

The plains are almost wholly uninhabitable by people depending upon agriculture.

We feel that the road to technology.... has led modern society to a damaged and seared earth

They are not valuable wetlands. They are degraded industrial wastelands.

No civilization worthy of the name has every been founded on any agricultural basis other than that of cereals.

Industrialization, by drawing people from the countryside to the cities brings with it the weakening of traditional political and social support systems.

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.

… whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

If the diligence of modern industry were replaced by the contemplative life of the past, unnumbered millions would be doomed to death by starvation.

It is not known where he that invented the plough was born, nor where he died: yet he has effected more for the happiness of the world than the whole race of heroes and of conquerors, who have drenched it with tears, and manured it with blood, and whose birth, parentage, and education have been handed down to us with a precision proportionate to the mischief they have done.

I see how these beautiful forests are now open to destruction because of technology. Companies are able to get into more and more remote places that weren't economically viable before.

The computer is a mechanism for acceleration: it accelerates economic activity, and this is eating up the world. It's eating up resources, it's processing, it's manufacturing, it's distributing, it's consuming. That's what the computer's real work does, and it does that 24/7, 365 days a year, non-stop, just to satisfy our own narrow needs.

It's no good kicking progress In the teeth - there's nothing wrong with a tractor.

All of our current environmental problems are unanticipated harmful consequences of our existing technology. There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced.

Agriculture is the new golf

Eventually, humans invented agriculture, which could be understood as a way of turning the natural world into a tool for our use. There's evidence that we have been domesticating crops and animals for at least 15,000 years, adapting ecosystems to our preferred way of life.

I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example a lawnmower.