Paulo Freire: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Organization is not only directly linked to unity, but a natural development of that unity. Accordingly, the leaders' pursuit of that unity is also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

People , Nature

“Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, Manipulation

Problem

“A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2, page 253

People , Reality

“Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Teachers

“Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders, on the other hand, cannot believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

People

“Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

“Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Education , Teachers

“The dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students-teachers in pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Education , Freedom , Teachers

“The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in school, where students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

School , Home , Thinking

“This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

People , Books

“A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

People

“For them, having more is an inalienable right.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressors

“Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

Women , Men , World

“The oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given--something to which people, as mere spectators, must adapt.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

People , World , Problem

“Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Way

“Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality and towards self-awareness, which makes this investigation a starting point for the educational process or for cultural action of a liberating character.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Education , Reality

“Some may think that to affirm dialogue--the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world--is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4

Women , Men , People , World

“Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

World , Communication , Thinking , Reality

“The participants begin to realize that if their analysis of the situation goes any deeper they will either have to divest themselves of their myths, or reaffirm them. Divesting themselves of and renouncing their myths represents, at that moment, an act of self-violence. On the other hand, to reaffirm those myths is to reveal themselves.”

Paulo Freire

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

“Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one.”

Paulo Freire

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressed

Pain