Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

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

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

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

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

Paulo Freire
A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education.

Paulo Freire
Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.

Paulo Freire
With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation.

Paulo Freire
Without a minimum of hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle.

Paulo Freire
The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.

Paulo Freire