A Florilegium (A Commonplace Book)

A collection of favourite quotes from Ivan Illich and others....

For Helen…..

During the course of writing these essays I have made extensive use of quotes from the writing of Ivan Illich and many others. What I have now decided to do is to revive the very old practice of collecting these together into what used to be called a Book of Commonplaces, i.e. a scrapbook of favorite quotes/memorable sayings; but then I came across the word ‘Florilegium’ (pronounced Flor-ee-leg-ee-mm) ¹

In medieval Latin, a florilegium (plural florilegia) was a compilation of excerpts ….and is an offshoot of the commonplacing tradition.²

and I couldn’t resist it as a title, as I love the idea of having a collection of ideas as a selection of thought flowers (I might even add some images as well).

I was delighted to find that one of the first to do this was a 13th century Irish monk called Thomas of Ireland in his Manipulus florum (Handful of flowers)³ so I’m in excellent company. Here’s a good description of the commonplacing tradition:

https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/what-were-commonplace-books-simon-ohagan

17th century commonplace book example...no Wikipedia then!

This page will be an open ended work-in-progress as an accompaniment to my essays on specific topics; I’d like it to be collaborative, so if you have any ideas or come across something interesting then please add in the comment section and I’ll pop it in the relevant or a new category. Or you could even start your own….

The category headings are in no particular order (although roughly alphabetical), nor are the quotes, just as I find them. It’s not confined to Illich, if there are any other authors (or quotes from yourself), that you think you’d like to add, just give the attribution to the author, book or journal and the year if possible (and a URL would be great). Images (as long as they are not copyright protected) are fine, but do give an attribution where and when you found them. You can also suggest websites, but give a short description of what they are and when you accessed them last eg Windy app gives real time wind speeds across Europe available at https://www.windy.com/?53.195,-8.571,5 (accessed 2025). You could state why this quote is significant to you, or not…

I’m going to try and keep my quotes short, it’s got to be fairly punchy and convey a single idea, not lots. But let’s see…

Advertising

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small…..They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are ‘The Advertisers’ and they are laughing at you (Banksy, 2004)⁴

Arguments

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism(CS Lewis, Bulverism, 1941)

Asset Managers

We’re in the business of owning the backbone of the global economy. [But] what we do is behind the scenes. Nobody knows we’re there, and we provide critical infrastructure to people that somebody pays a small amount for (Financial Times, Bruce Flatt of Brookfield, 2018)⁵

Bureaucracy

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience (The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, "God in the Dock". Book by C. S. Lewis, 1970)

The greatest evils in the world… will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits ..sitting behind desks (C. S. Lewis,Preface to The Screwtape Letters, 1961)

Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead. Large Man: Yes he is."Dead" Man: I'm not. Dead Collector: He isn't. Large Man: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill."Dead" Man: I'm getting better. Large Man: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment. Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations. (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, dir Terry Gillian and Terry Jones, 1975)

Civilization

The bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe. Under the democratic-authoritarian social contract, each member of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus he may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority: food, housing, swift transportation, instantaneous communication, medical care, entertainment, education. But on one condition: that one must not merely ask for nothing that the system does not provide, but likewise agree to take everything offered, duly processed and fabricated, homogenized and equalized, in the precise quantities that the system, rather than the person, requires. Once one opts for the system no further choice remains. In a word, if one surrenders one’s life at source, authoritarian technics will give back as much of it as can be mechanically graded, quantitatively multiplied, collectively manipulated and magnified (Lewis Mumford,Authoritarian and Democratic Technics 1964 From Technology and Culture, Vol. 5, No. l (Winter, 1964), pp. 1-8.)

Consumption

The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)

If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter 1)

Man: I think it was, "Blessed are the cheesemakers"! Gregory's wife: What's so special about the cheesemakers? Gregory: Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products. (Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979)

Culture

For the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways,
They scorned us just for being what we are,
But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams,
Or light a penny candle from a star. (Galway Bay lyrics by Dr Arthur Colahan, 1956)

Culture is always upstream from politics…that’s why culture matters (Bono, The Story of Us, 2025)

sticking to the register of presence, connection, and love can obscure substantive imbalances in power and resources, often to the benefit of the one with more of these. (Mary Harrington, Substck, Jan 2025)

Current Affairs

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall (The Beatles,Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club, 1967)

Don't start that talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to rights (Oliver’s Army, Elvis Costello, 1979)

The famous Northern reticence, the tight gag of place,And times: yes, yes. Of the 'wee six' I sing, Where to be saved you only must save face, And whatever you say, you say nothing (Seamus Heaney, From Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, 1975).

Death

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four-foot box, a foot for every year. (Seamus Heaney, Mid-Term Break,1966)

Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars (Dante, Paradiso, XXXIII, 142-145)

Economics

Economics are the method: the object is to change the heart and soul (Margaret Thatcher,Interview for the Sunday Times, 1981)

Engineering

I’m hoping for my next command, to be given a Federation starship……Now I have a confession to make. I am an engineer. And if I get that command, I want a chief engineering officer like Montgomery Scott. Because I know Scotty will get the job done and do it right. Even if I often hear him say, ‘But Captain, I dinna have enough time!’ So from one old engineer to another, thanks, Scotty. (Neil Armstrong at a 2003 Star Trek convention)⁶

A good engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper (Scotty, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Relics)⁷.

Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want (Scotty, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Relics)⁸.

Efficiency

It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth⁹ (William Stanley Jevons, 1865, The Coal Question). Describes the Jevons’ effect, where increased efficiency leads to increased consumption

Energy

The product of the mass of a body into the square of its velocity may properly be termed its energy (Thomas Young, 1807, Lectures on Energy)¹⁰

Nor I, answered Marianne with energy, (Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen, 1811)¹¹

It is important to realise that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is.We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. (Richard Fentyman, 1964)¹²

the energy concept has no meaning apart from a corresponding process (Percy Bridgeman)¹³

Energy cannot be considered as an entity or a substance that. As strange as it may seem, there are still societies where people still live without energy and its organizing constraints (Nicolas Labanca, The Social Construction of Energy, Thinking after Ivan Illich, 2023)

Prosumers produce and consume energy (US Department of Energy, 2024)¹⁴

I think that the energy principles used to organize contemporary societies are not natural, and further, that their application continues to transmogrify people and the universe into motors that need to consume limited energy resources (Nicolas Labanca, The Social Construction of Energy, Thinking after Ivan Illich, 2023)

Electricity Grids

Real time information on the composition of the UK energy grid available at: https://grid.iamkate.com [accessed Jan 2025]

Real time information on the energy mix of the Irish electricity grid available at: https://www.eirgrid.ie/grid/real-time-system-information [accessed Jan 2025]

We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.(Gerald Durrell, Two in the Bush, 1966)

Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don’t realise is that we’re trying to prevent the human race from committing suicide … We have declared war on the biological world, the world that supports us … At the moment the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on (Gerald Durrell, Two in the Bush, 1966)

Equality

At last the Dodo said, 'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 3, 1865)

In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another (Gerald Winstanley, The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649).

Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night (Bette Davis as Margo Channing,All About Eve, 1950)

all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well (Julian of Norwich, Revealations of Divine Love c 1393).

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.Gospel of Matthew 22:15–21 (KJV).

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission (A. J. P. Taylor’s English History, 1914-1945, 1965)

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony……You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, directed by Terry Gillian and Terry Jones, 1975)

Dennis: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed! Arthur: Bloody Peasant! Dennis: Ooh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you? (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, directed by Terry Gillian and Terry Jones, 1975)

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? (Monty Python, Life of Brian, 1979)

History says don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme (Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy, 1991)

..my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern (CS Lewis, Preface to the Screwtape letters, 1961)

One of the fundamental premises I’ll always stick by is that you can’t really understand an idea unless you know where it came from (Laura London, Substack, Jan 2025)

Ideas are more powerful than guns. (Wikinews interview with Tony Benn (8 August 2007), quote from approx 24min45 sec into interview).

Invisibility

“I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 7, 1871)

Imagination

I'm dancing the seven veils
Want you to pick up my scarf
See how the black moon fades
Soon I can give you my heart. (Sinead O Connor, The Lion and the Cobra, 1987)

‘No, no’ said the Queen, ‘Sentence first; verdict afterwards’, (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland,Chapter 7, 1865)

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. “Off with his head!” she said without even looking round’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 7, 1865).

Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through (Jonathan Swift,A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind,1707)

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority (Samuel Johnson, The Rambler,No. 148,17 August 1751)

There is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the just execution thereof, although it be against themselves, so that they may have the protection and benefits of the law, when, upon just cause, they do desire it (John Davies, Attorney General for Ireland, 1606-1619)

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.(William Shakespeare,Henry VI, Part II, which was (we think) written between 1596 and 1599.)

If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously……..life… finds a way (Jeff Goldblum as Dr Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, 1993).

Madness

King Arthur: You are indeed brave Sir Knight, but the fight is mine. Black Knight: Oh, had enough, eh? King Arthur: Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left! Black Knight: Yes I Have. King Arthur: Look! Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, dir Terry Gillian and Terry Jones, 1975)

When I passed you in the doorway
Well, you took me with a glance…my father, he's going crazy
He says I'm living in a trance (Dancing in the Moonlight (It’s Caught Me in Its Spotlight) Lyric Phil Lynott, Album, Still Dangerous, 1977)

Father Ted: That would be quite common you know. The favourite son would become a doctor and then the idiot brother would be sent off to the priesthood. Father Dougal: Your brother is a doctor isn't he? Father Ted: Yes he is. (Father Ted, Entertaining Father Stone, Series 1, 1995)

Materialism

“In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
”Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of “(C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 1952)

‘Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'
'You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: 'it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter 7)

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Section 1, paragraph 18, lines 12-14.

You’re everywhere and nowhere, baby (Jeff Beck, Hi-ho Silver Lining, 1967)

Memes

a cultural feature or type of behavior that is passed from one generation to another without the influence of genesis (Richard Dawkins, 2014, The Selfish Gene)¹¹

Once we have ink, it’s real (All the Worse Humans, Phil Elwood, 2024)

Memory

“The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget!"
"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."
- Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1872/1982, p. 94, emphasis in original)

Modernity

‘But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here’. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 7, 1865)

‘I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, 'and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak — and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them.' (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 8, 1865)

Of all the symbolic systems that have spun off into fantasy, the most obvious is money. The wealth it supposedly measures has become so detached from nature and collective human wellbeing that its pursuit threatens to destroy both. The pursuit of money, rather than what it originally measured, is central to the collective insanity of civilization. Money collapses a multiplicity of values into a single thing called value (Charles Eisenstein_.(https://substack.com/@charleseisenstein132105)

Father Ted:….that money was just resting in my account before I moved it on! (Father Ted, Old Grey Whistle Test, 1995)

Myths

Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step… If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story (Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich, 1973)

Politics is not politics. Image is not image. Everything is myth (Paul Kingsnorth, The Abbey of Misrule, 2023).

While the outline of myths from a past period or from a society other than one’s own can usually be seen quite clearly, to recognize the myths that are dominant in one’s own time and society is always difficult. This is hardly surprising, because a myth has its authority not by proving itself but by presenting itself. In this sense the authority of a myth indeed “goes without saying,” and the myth can be outlined in detail only when its authority is no longer unquestioned but has been rejected or overcome in some manner by another, more comprehensive myth. (Encycopedia Brtannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/myth)

The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed (C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 1960)

A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. It will always work, on those who can receive it, the same catharsis.(CS Lewis,"Haggard Rides Again", in Time and Tide, Vol. XLI (3 September 1960))

Perspective

Father Ted is demonstrating some plastic toy cows to Dougal: Father Ted: ...OK, one last time. These are small... but the ones out there are far away. Small... far away... ah forget it! (Father Ted, Series Two, Hell, 1996)

Poetry

Limerick is furtive and mean. You should keep her in close quarantine: or she sneaks up to the slums: And promptly becomes. Disorderly, drunk and obscene (Morris Bishop, There Once Was a Limerick Anthology, 2022).¹²

In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed. (Seamus Heaney,"The Government of the Tongue", in The Government of the Tongue: selected prose, 1978-1987 (1989).

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world (Percy Bysshe Shelley, In Defence of Poetry, 1821)

[the poet] For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time (Percy Bysshe Shelley, In Defence of Poetry, 1821)

Politics

Political toleration is a by-product of the complacency of the ruling class. When that complacency is disturbed there never was a more bloody-minded set of thugs than the British ruling class (Aneurin Bevan,Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1933)

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down (Aneurin Bevan, In the Observer, 6 December 1953)

I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine (Aneurin Bevan, Tribune Rally, 29 September 1954)

Progress

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy",1941)

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1871, Chapter 2)

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where —' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, Chapter 7, 1865)

Propaganda

Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles…..But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They're all right already. They’ll believe anything (CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945)

Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world (Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve(Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals! Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We're all individuals! Brian: You're all different! Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different! Man in crowd: I'm not...(Monty Python, Life of Brian, 1979)

If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story “Benn grabs child.” (Tony Benn, Remarks to the National Executive Committee (26 February 1975), quoted in The Times (27 February 1975), p. 3 and The Times (28 June 1999), p. 3

Spirit

And though she be but little, she is fierce (Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, spoken by Helena)

Tools

Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973).⁴²

Tools, in other words, have an optimal, a tolerable and a destructive range (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)

a people can be just as dangerously overpowered by the wattage of its tools as by the caloric content of its foods (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)⁴

the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation and impotence (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)¹¹

Hyper industrial tools by their very nature restrict to a very few the liberty to use them in an autonomous way (Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich, 1973)

Renewable Energy

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels,Voyage to Laputa, Ch. 5, 1726)

Slaves

slavery: condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons (Encylopedia Britanica)

Both [rich and poor societies] must reject the fatal image of man the slaveholder currently promoted by an ideologically stimulated hunger for more energy (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)

Energy-slave, based on the average output of a hard-working man doing 150,000 foot-pounds of work per day and working 250 days per year (Buckminster Fuller)¹⁵

I’m Spartacus (Spartacus, 1960, dir Stanley Kubrick, starring Kirk Douglas)

When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses his pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it. That's why we'll win. (Spartacus, 1960, dir Stanley Kubrick, starring Kirk Douglas)

By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed. (Lewis Mumford, "The Challenge of Renewal", 1951)

Society

a social construction can be, in appearance and fact, a very solid and concrete thing. A social construction does not imply that the resulting artifacts, techniques, and organizational arrangements are imaginary or fragile (Nicolas LaBanca, Thinking After Ivan Illich)⁶¹

Society can be destroyed when further growth of mass production renders the milieu hostile, when it extinguishes the free use of the natural abilities of society's members, when it isolates people from each other and locks them into a manmade shell (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)

It is now difficult to imagine a modern society in which industrial growth is balanced and kept in check (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973)²³

This so-called affluent society is an ugly society still. It is a vulgar society. It is a meretricious society. It is a society in which priorities have gone all wrong (Aneurin Bevan, Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (29 November 1959), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, Volume Two: 1945–1960 [1973] (1975), p. 642 and The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 72)

Shipping

Real time global shipping website giving the real time location of Royal Carribbean’s Icon of the Seas:

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:7839734/mmsi:3110%01178/imo:9829930/

Scale

The major variables which can upset the balance of life…..when corporate tools become destructive of society itself (Tools for Convivialiy, Ivan Illich, 1973)

When an enterprise grows beyond a certa⁸in point on this scale, it first frustrates the end for which it was originally designed, and then rapidly becomes a threat to society itself. These scales must be identified and the parameters of human endeavours within which human life remains viable must be explored (Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973).¹⁶

Science

your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should (Jeff Goldblum as Dr Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, 1993).

Technology

We must guard against falling into the equally damaging rejection of all machines as if they were works of the devil (Tools for Convivialiy, Ivan Illich, 1973)

What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (CS Lewis,The Abolition of Man, 1943)

If we are to prevent megatechnics from further controlling and deforming every aspect of human culture, we shall be able to do so only with the aid of a radically different model derived directly, not from machines, but from living organisms and organic complexes (ecosystems). What can be known about life only through the process of living — and so is part of even the humblest organisms — must be added to all the other aspects that can be observed, abstracted, measured (Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power, 1970)

The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable. (Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood, Ch. 2 : The Printing Press and the New Adult, 1982)

A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) Neil Postman)

Titanic

I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that. (Captain Edward Smith, Titanic’s captain speaking the year before the Titanic’s launch)⁹

if you look in your dictionary you will find: Titans – A race of people vainly striving to overcome the forces of nature. Could anything be more unfortunate than such a name, anything more significant? (Captain Arthur Rostrom of the Carparthia speaking at the official enquiry into the disaster)⁴²

I was thoroughly familiar with pretty well every type of ship afloat but it took me 14 days before I could, with confidence, find my way from one part of that ship to another. -Charles Lightoller, Titanic Second Officer (describing his impression of the sheer size of Titanic)⁴⁰

Iceberg that may have sank the Titanic: from Rare Historical Photos website:

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/iceberg-sunk-titanic-1912/

Thinking

‘Thinking again?' the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
'I've a right to think,' said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
'Just about as much right,' said the Duchess, 'as pigs have to fly. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter 9)'

The Future

“You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know." (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5, 1871)

Our vision of the possible and the feasible is so restricted by industrial expectations that any alternative to more mass production sounds like a a return to past oppression or like a Utopian design for noble savages (Tools for Convivialiy, Ivan Illich, 1973)

I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies. (Ivan Illich, 1973, Tools for Conviviality).

The Impossible

‘“One can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5, 1871)

So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 1865).

War

Oliver’s Army are on their way, Oliver’s Army are here to stay (Oliver’s Army, Elvis Costello, 1979)

“Really, now you ask me”, said Alice, very much confused, 'I don't think —'
'Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865)

“When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6, 1871."

Writing

The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it. (As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis" (1963)

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.
'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.' (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 7, 1865)

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.'(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 7, 1865)

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. (Seamus Heaney, "Digging", line 25, from Death of a Naturalist (1966).

The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words (Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn (2005)

Wind

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. (Gospel of John 3:8)⁶⁵

Windify Website: Real time information on wind speeds across Europe website available at https://www.windy.com/?53.195,-8.571,5 [accessed 9/01/2025]

1. https://howjsay.com/how-to-pronounce-florilegium

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florilegium

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_of_Ireland

4. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461383-people-are-taking-the-piss-out-of-you-everyday-they

5. https://www.brookfield.com/sites/default/files/2019-02/FT_Bruce_Flatt_09242018_0.pdf

6. https://trektoday.com/content/2012/11/neil-armstrongs-star-trek-wish/

7. https://www.quotes.net/mquote/863765

8. https://www.quotes.net/mquote/863765

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

10. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/consumer-vs-prosumer-whats-difference

11. https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/physics-biographies/thomas-young

12. http://literaturepage.com/read/senseandsensibility-143.html

13. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/bridgman.htm

14. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/249011/do-we-have-a-better-understanding-of-what-energy-is-since-feynmans-time

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave

16. https://www.britannica.com/topic/myth