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

—  Ivan Illich , book Tools for Conviviality

Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ch. 3

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 28, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy." by Ivan Illich?
Ivan Illich photo
Ivan Illich 66
austrian philosopher and theologist 1926–2002

Related quotes

“Prison is a society within a society. It’s a reflection of life in the streets. The jargon may be different, but we think and feel the same as on the streets and we recreate it in prison.”

Miguel Piñero (1946–1988) Puerto Rican writer

As quoted in the book Captive Audience: Prison and Captivity in Contemporary Theatre https://books.google.com/books?id=oEKSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq about Piñero’s views regarding prison culture

“Injecting illegal drugs is NOT OK! Prison must be a place where prisoners can detoxify and have the chance to break the habit. This avenue should be addressed, rather than options which reinforce the addictive behaviour.”

Stewart Leggett (1944) Australian politician

HIV/AIDS - Hepatitis B Inquiry (Part II): Dissenting Statement by Mr Stewart Leggett MP (1997)

Ta-Nehisi Coates photo

“Plunder has matured into habit and addiction; the people who could author the mechanized death of our ghettos, the mass rape of private prisons, then engineer their own forgetting, must inevitably plunder much more. This is not a belief in prophecy but in the seductiveness of cheap gasoline.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 146.
Context: I had heard such predictions all my life from Malcolm and all his posthumous followers who hollered that the Dreamers must reap what they sow. I saw the same prediction in the words of Marcus Garvey who promised to return in a whirlwind of vengeful ancestors, an army of Middle Passage undead. No. I left The Mecca knowing that this was all too pat, knowing that should the Dreamers reap what they had sown, we would reap it right with them. Plunder has matured into habit and addiction; the people who could author the mechanized death of our ghettos, the mass rape of private prisons, then engineer their own forgetting, must inevitably plunder much more. This is not a belief in prophecy but in the seductiveness of cheap gasoline.

“Loneliness is a kind of prison.
[Vincent Van Gogh]”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)

Angela Davis photo

“The call to abolish the prison as the dominant form of punishment cannot ignore the extent to which the institution of the prison has stockpiled ideas and practices that are hopefully approaching obsolescence in the larger society, but that retain their ghastly vitality behind prison walls.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter Four

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The House of the Dead

The House of the Dead (1862) as translated by Constance Garnett; as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) by Fred R. Shapiro, p. 210 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ck6bXqt5shkC&pg=PA210

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don't mistake either for being free.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

Tanith Lee photo

“Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 2, “The Chalice” (p. 16)

“The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.”

Piri Thomas (1928–2011) Puerto Rican poet

Related topics