“Man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them.”
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Ivan Illich 66
austrian philosopher and theologist 1926–2002Related quotes

As quoted in The Quotable Intellectual (2010) edited by P. Archer, p. 152 http://books.google.com/books?id=QnDvIsNKNIwC
“Whether or not we choose to watch, evolution is shaping us all.”
Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 1, Daphne Major (p. 16)

“For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.”
Watch on the Rhine (1941)

Source: On Freedom (1958)
Context: It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 — the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains — triumphed and then ended in failure. … Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.

As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, Epistle LXXXVII (trans. R. M. Gummere)

“To choose evil is to choose freedom—“freedom, emancipation from all restraint.””
Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxiv, note