Paulo Freire Quotes

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How can the oppressed, as divided unauthentic beings, participate in the pedagogy of their liberation?

Paulo Freire
In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
The correct method lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight in their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientização.

Paulo Freire
In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.

Paulo Freire
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.

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

Paulo Freire
Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation.

Paulo Freire
There is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been taught.

Paulo Freire
Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.

Paulo Freire
Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

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

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.

Paulo Freire
The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.

Paulo Freire
Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue.

Paulo Freire
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.

Paulo Freire
In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they existin the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.

Paulo Freire
To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them.

Paulo Freire
Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

Paulo Freire
As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible.

Paulo Freire
People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened—if their work does not belong to them—the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.

Paulo Freire
This is the sense in which I am obliged to be a listener. To listen to the student's doubts, fears, and incompetencies that are part of the learning process. It is in listening to the student that I learn to speak with him or her.

Paulo Freire
Finally, cultural revolution develops the practice of permanent dialogue between leaders and people and consolidates the participation of the people in power.

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
When we live our lives with the authenticity demanded by the practice of teaching that is also learning and learning that is also teaching, we are participating in a total experience.... In this experience the beautiful, the decent, and the serious form a circle with hands joined.

Paulo Freire
The culture of the dominant class hinders the affirmation of men as beings of decision.

Paulo Freire
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.

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

Paulo Freire
Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

Paulo Freire