Surreptitiously, reliance on institutional process has replaced dependence on personal good will. The world has lost its humane dimension and reacqui… - Ivan Illich

Le vélo élève la mobilité autogène de l'homme jusqu'à un nouveau degré, au-delà duquel il n'y a plus en théorie de progrès possible. À l'opposé, la cabine individuelle accélérée a rendu les sociétés capables de s'engager dans un rituel de la vitesse qui progressivement les paralyse.

The American university has become the final stage of the most all encompassing initiation rite the world has ever known. No society in history has been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first which has needed such a dull, protracted, destructive, and expensive initiation into its myth. The contemporary world civilization is also the first one which has found it necessary to rationalize its fundamental initiation ritual in the name of education. We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them.

Excessive forms of wealth and prolonged formal employment, no matter how well distributed, destroy the social, cultural, and environmental conditions for equal productive freedom.