Paulo Freire - People Quotes

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Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.

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
It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either.

Paulo Freire
I am dealing with people and not with things. And, because I am dealing with people, I cannot refuse my wholehearted and loving attention, even in personal matters, where I see that a student is in need of such attention.

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

Paulo Freire
I intrepret the revolutionary process as dialogical cultural action which is prolonged in 'cultural revolution' once power is taken. In both stages a serious and profound effort at conscientização—by means of which the people, through a true praxis, leave behind the status of objects to assume the status of historical Subjects—is necessary.

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

Paulo Freire
Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.

Paulo Freire
To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

Paulo Freire
"Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men."

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
A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation.

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
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.

Paulo Freire
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.

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
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.

Paulo Freire
For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in a revolution. Whether one calls this correct thinking 'revolutionary consciousness' or 'class consciousness,' it is an indispensable precondition of revolution. The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep people from thinking.

Paulo Freire
Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people—they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

Paulo Freire
The more educators and the people investigate the people's thinking, and are thus jointly educated, the more they continue to investigate.

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

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

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire