Paulo Freire Quotes

It is accomplished by the oppressors depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo.

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.

The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.

In a dynamic, rather than static, view of revolution, there is no absolute 'before' or 'after,' with the taking of power as the dividing line.

The task of revolutionary leaders is to pose as problems not only this myth, but all the other myths used by the oppressor elites to oppress.

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

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.

People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality.

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

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.

The thematics which have come from the people return to them—not as contents to be deposited, but as problems to be solved.

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

One might say they failed to perceive the untested feasibility lying beyond the limit-situations which engendered their needs.

The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal contradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the inhabitants' awareness of these contradictions.

Critical perception cannot be imposed.