Quotes from Paulo Freire

How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?

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

Only through communication can human life hold meaning.

Love is an act of courage.

There is, in fact, no teaching without learning.

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.

No reality transforms itself.

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.

The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual.

Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah, " and practice, pure activism.

Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.

... 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.

Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.

Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

What if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to become fully human?

Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.

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

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

Education is freedom.

Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.

Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.