Paulo Freire Quotes

Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students.

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.

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

Knowing is the task of Subjects, not of objects. It is as a subject, and only as such, that a man or woman can really know. In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriated learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with "contents" whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged.

It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.

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.

Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one.

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

It is when the majorities are denied their right to participate in history as Subjects that they become dominated and alienated.

Critical perception cannot be imposed.

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.

Trust is established by dialogue.

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.

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.

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