Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

119 Sourced Quotes

View all Paulo Freire Quotes
Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means which people discover each other to be 'in a situation.'

Paulo Freire
Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

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

Paulo Freire
They have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.

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

Paulo Freire
The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.

Paulo Freire
They call themselves ignorant and say the 'professor' is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen.

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

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
Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal. For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more—always more—even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have.

Paulo Freire
The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming.

Paulo Freire
Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.

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
Almost never do they realize that they, too, 'know things' they have learned in their relations with the world.

Paulo Freire
Those who are served by the present limit-situation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and act to maintain the status quo.

Paulo Freire
A fact which is not denied but whose truths are rationalized loses its objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth created in defense of the class of the perceiver.

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

Paulo Freire
Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one.

Paulo Freire
It is necessary to trust in the oppressed and in their ability to reason.

Paulo Freire
The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.'

Paulo Freire
Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed.

Paulo Freire
Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders—in their communion, in their praxis—can this theory be built.

Paulo Freire
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them';

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

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire
Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.

Paulo Freire
The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.

Paulo Freire
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.

Paulo Freire