Paulo Freire
One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming.Collection: Educational
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.Collection: Essentials
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.Collection: Practice
language is never neutralCollection: Language
Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them.Collection: People
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.Collection: Exercise
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.Collection: Class
It is not suprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings.Collection: Men
The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.Collection: Community
Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Teaching
Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.Collection: Real
... 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.Collection: Teacher
Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.Collection: Giving
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 oppressedCollection: Destiny
The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.'Collection: Models
Education is suffering from narration sickness.Collection: Suffering
It is truly difficult to make a democracy. Democracy, like arty dream, is not made with spiritual words but with reflection and practice. It is not what I say that says I am a democrat, that I am not racist or machista but what I do. What I say must not be contradicted by what I do. It is what I do that bespeaks my faithfulness or not to what I say.Collection: Dream
The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.Collection: Struggle
Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students.Collection: Exercise
One cannot conceive of objectivity without subjectivity.Collection: Objectivity
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.Collection: Teacher
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing... The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence.Collection: Teacher
Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Dream
Organization is not only directly linked to unity, but a natural development of that unity. Accordingly, the leaders' pursuit of that unity is also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task." "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.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Men
An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.Collection: Commitment
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.Collection: Fighting
Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them.Collection: Men
The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves.Collection: Freedom
Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of them.Collection: Reading