Quotes About Reality

Cultural invasion is on the one hand an instrument of domination, and on the other, the result of domination. Thus, cultural action of a dominating character (like other forms of antidialogical action), in addition to being deliberate and planned, is in another sense simply a product of oppressive reality.

Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes "the practice of freedom," the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

To achieve critical consciousness of the facts that it is necessary to be the "owner of one's own labor," that labor "constitutes part of the human person," and that "a human being can neither be sold nor can he sell himself" is to go a step beyond the deception of palliative solutions. It is to engage in authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing that reality, to humanize women and men.

Each, however, as he revolves about "his" truth, feels threatened if that truth is questioned. Thus, each considers anything that is not "his" truth a lie.

Just as objective social reality exists not by chance, but as the product of human action, so it is not transformed by chance. If humankind produce social reality, then transforming that reality is an historical task, a task for humanity.

Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform.

Consistent with the liberating purpose of dialogical education, the object of the investigation is not persons (as if they were anatomical fragments), but rather the thought-language with which men and women refer to reality, the levels at which they perceive that reality, and their view of the world, in which their generative themes are found.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by preserving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in a total reality. And without this critical intervention, it is always difficult to achieve the unity of the oppressed as a class.

Es por esto que [la educación liberadora] reconoce [a las personas] como seres que están siendo, como seres inacabados, inconclusos en y con una realidad que siendo historia es también tan inacabada como ellos. [...] De [la inconclusión de las personas y la conciencia que de ella tienen] que sea la educación un quehacer permanente. Permanente en razón de la inconclusión de los seres humanos y del devenir de la realidad.

Only human beings are praxis--the praxis which, as the reflection and action which truly transform reality, is the source of knowledge and creation. Animal activity, which occurs without a praxis, is not creative; people's transforming activity is.

Thematic investigation is only justified to the extent that it returns to the people what truly belongs to them; to the extent that it represents, not an attempt to learn about the people, but to come to know with them the reality which challenges them.

Both education and the investigation designed to support it must be "sympathetic" activities, in the etymological sense of the word. That is, they must consist of communication and of the common experience of a reality perceived in the complexity of its constant "becoming.

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs. In this way, they can go beyond the level of real consciousness to that of potential consciousness much more rapidly.

The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.

The theory without the practice becomes 'verbosity', as well as the practice without theory, turns activism. However, when it joins the practice with the theory has been the praxis, the creative and modifier action of reality.

In cultural invasion, both the spectators and the reality to be preserved are objects of the actors' action. In cultural synthesis, there are no spectators; the object of the actors' action is the reality to be transformed for the liberation of men.

The radical is never a subjectivist. For this individual the subjective aspect exists only in relation to the objective aspect (the concrete reality, which is the object of analysis). Subjectivity and objectivity thus join in a dialectical unity producing knowledge in solidarity with action, and vice versa.

Let me reemphasize that posing reality as a problem does not mean sloganizing: it means critical analysis of a problematic reality.

Study circles. They began also to have their study circles, studying, discussing the Gospels, and think­ ing about the political and social circumstances in which they were reinterpreting the Gospels. In doing that, they discovered the need to change the country, and they got a new consciousness-a historical, politi­cal consciousness of the reality.

essa ideia ninguém me tira matéria é mentira

the problem with knowing is that it takes away the possibility of pretending!

What looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.

What looks like crazy on an ordinary day, looks a lot like love when you catch it in the moonlight.