Quotes About Awareness

What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

A bow has no conscience: it is a prolongation of the hand and desire of the archer. It can serve to kill or to meditate. Therefore, always be clear about your intentions. A bow is flexible, but it has its limits. Stretching it beyond its capacity will break it or exhaust the hand holding it. Therefore, try to be in harmony with your instrument and never ask more than it can give.

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically "accept" their exploitation.

One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge men's consciousness.

Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic.

The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it, this person is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue.

Conditioned by the position of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven.

Language is being used to make social inequality invisible.

With the insight that genuine literacy involves "reading the word and the world," renowned educator Paulo Freire helped open the door to a broader understanding of the term, one that moves from a strict decoding and reproducing of language into issues of economics, health, and sustainable development

I must intervene in teaching the peasants that their hunger is socially constructed and work with them to help identify those responsible for this social construction, which is, in my view, a crime against humanity. Therefore, we need to intervene not only pedagogically but also ethically.

After all, the task of the humanists is surely not that of pitting their slogans against the slogans of the oppressors, with the oppressed as the testing ground, "housing" the slogans of first one group and then the other. On the contrary, the task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings, "housing" the oppressors within them­ selves, they cannot be truly human.

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.

A consciência é essa misteriosa e contraditória capacidade que tem o homem de distanciar-se das coisas para fazê-las presentes, imediatamente presentes.

A reflexividade é a raiz da objetivação

Testemunhando objetivamente sua história, mesmo a consciência ingênua acaba por despertar criticamente, para identificar-se como personagem que se ignorava e é chamada a assumir seu papel.

The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived.

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.

Along the same lines, it is indispensable to analyze the contents of newspaper editorials following any given event: "Why do different newspapers have such different interpretations of the same fact?" This practice helps develop a sense of criticism, so that people will react to newspapers or news broadcasts not as passive objects of the "communiqués" directed at them, but rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free.

Mais do que ser educando por causa de uma razão qualquer, o educando precisa tornar-se educando assumindo-se como sujeito cognoscente e não como incidência do discurso do educador. Nisto é que reside, em última análise, a grande importância política do ato de ensinar.

To speak a true word is to transform the world.