Michael > Michael's Quotes

“Experiences like these led him to believe that the fundamental problem with marketing was its reliance on the past. It looked backward, not forward, and failed to take into account innovation, trends, or cultural shifts in taste.”
― Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

“How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.”
― Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation

“he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?”
― Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation

“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“The right of free assembly has been politically recognized and culturally accepted. We should now understand that this right is curtailed by laws that make some forms of assembly obligatory. This is especially the case with institutions which conscript according to age group, class, or sex, and which are very time-consuming. The army is one example. School is an even more outrageous one.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“Schools themselves pervert the natural inclination to grow and learn into the demand for instruction.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“School appropriates the money, men, and good will available for education and in addition discourages other institutions from assuming educational tasks. Work, leisure, politics, city living, and even family life depend on schools for the habits and knowledge they presuppose, instead of becoming themselves the means of education.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

“A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society