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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.

— Ivan Illich Medical Nemesis (1976)

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More quotes by Ivan Illich

A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age.

Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Tools for Conviviality (1973)

Churches also have their problems with a Jesus whose only economics are jokes.

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools.

Deschooling Society (1971)

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

Every morning
I wake up with the news
of bloodshed.
I feel my body,
desperate to know whether
I’m still alive.

Suman Pokhrel

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ivan Illich (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.