Paulo Freire Quotes

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Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom.

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
The behavior and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the oppressor to practice cultural invasion, should evoke from the revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their objectives, but their procedures.

Paulo Freire
One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success.

Paulo Freire
Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love.

Paulo Freire
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

Paulo Freire
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.

Paulo Freire
A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance.

Paulo Freire
Teacher preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history.

Paulo Freire
Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them...

Paulo Freire
It is in our incompleteness, of which we are aware, that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished.

Paulo Freire
Studying is a preparation for knowing; it is a patient and impatient exercise on the part of someone whose intent is not to know it all at once but to struggle to meet the timing of knowledge.

Paulo Freire
In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity" the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.

Paulo Freire
The earliest language was body language and, since this language is the language of questions, if we limit the questions, and if we only pay attention to or place values on spoken or written language, then we are ruling out a large area of human language.

Paulo Freire
There are moments in which the teacher, as the authority talks to the learners, says what must be done, establishes limits without which the very freedom of learners is lost in lawlessness, but these moments, in accordance with the political options of the educator, are alternated with others in which the educator speaks with the learner.

Paulo Freire
Coherently democratic authority carries the conviction that true discipline does not exist in the muteness of those who have been silenced but in the stirrings of those who have been challenged, in the doubt of those who have been prodded, and in the hopes of those who have been awakened.

Paulo Freire
If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined.

Paulo Freire
I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.

Paulo Freire
The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.

Paulo Freire
Teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner. This is the mechanical transference from which results machinelike memorization, which I have already criticized. Critical study correlates with teaching that is equally critical, which necessarily demands a critical way of comprehending and of realizing the reading of the word and that of the world, the reading of text and of context.

Paulo Freire
We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.

Paulo Freire
Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.

Paulo Freire
As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom.

Paulo Freire
If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.

Paulo Freire
But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors

Paulo Freire
Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

Paulo Freire
It's really not possible for someone to imagine himself/herself as a subject in the process of becoming without having at the same time a disposition for change. And change of which she/he is not merely the victim but the subject.

Paulo Freire
No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.

Paulo Freire
The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy.

Paulo Freire
This capacity to go beyond the factors of conditioning is one of the obvious advantages of the human person.

Paulo Freire