Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 55
“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
Source: The Politics of Education (1985), Chapter 10, page 122
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Paulo Freire 115
educator and philosopher 1921–1997Related quotes

Part 1, Ch. 1, § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Context: Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.

Nobel lecture (2001)
Context: Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her — just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions. But to be born a girl in today's Afghanistan is to begin life centuries away from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved. It is to live under conditions that many of us in this hall would consider inhuman.
I speak of a girl in Afghanistan, but I might equally well have mentioned a baby boy or girl in Sierra Leone. No one today is unaware of this divide between the world’s rich and poor. No one today can claim ignorance of the cost that this divide imposes on the poor and dispossessed who are no less deserving of human dignity, fundamental freedoms, security, food and education than any of us. The cost, however, is not borne by them alone. Ultimately, it is borne by all of us — North and South, rich and poor, men and women of all races and religions.
Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another.

Source: Less Than Nothing (2012), Chapter One (The Drink Before), Vacillating The Semblances

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 215.

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 4, The Colour Of Money, p. 150

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 106.

Source: 1910s, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (1916), p. 26