Paulo Freire citations

“Une des questions centrales à laquelle nous devons nous confronter est celle de la transformation des postures rebelles en postures révolutionnaires qui nous engagent dans un processus radical de transformation du monde. La rébellion est un point de départ indispensable, une explosion de la juste colère, mais elle n'est pas suffisante.”

“Personne n'éduque autrui, personne ne s'éduque seul, les hommes s'éduquent ensemble par l'intermédiaire du monde.”

“Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.”

“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”

“Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them.”

“To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.”

“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.”

“The educator has the duty of not being neutral.”

“For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.”

“It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle.”

“The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.”

“True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, and in its existentiality, in its praxis.”

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

“If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed”

“… Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle…”

“The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.”

“No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.”

“One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.”

“Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.”

“The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves…”

“The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.”

“It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.”

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”

“The multitude is always in the wrong.”

“To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders.”

“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.”

“To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.”

“Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause--the cause of liberation.”

“The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.”

“Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.”

“This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a theory of action.”