P Freire Quotes & Sayings

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. — Paulo Freire

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. — Paulo Freire

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming. — Paulo Freire

Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality. — Paulo Freire

each day be open to the world, be ready to think; each day be ready not to accept what is said just because it is said, be predisposed to reread what is read; each day investigate, question, and doubt. — 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

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness. — Paulo Freire

The world is split between those who do not sleep because they are hungry and those who do not sleep because they are afraid of those who are hungry. — Paulo Freire

P40- this violence, as a process, is perpetuated from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its heirs and are shaped by it. — Paulo Freire

Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of opposites permanence and change. — Paulo Freire

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. — Paulo Freire

No one can learn tolerance in a climate of irresponsibility, which does not produce democracy. The act of tolerating requires a climate in which limits may be established, in which there are principles to be respected. That is why tolerance is not coexistence with the intolerable. Under an authoritarian regime, in which authority is abused, or a permissive one, in which freedom is not limited, one can hardly learn tolerance. Tolerance requires respect, discipline, and ethics. — Paulo Freire

Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood — Paulo Freire

There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. — Paulo Freire

Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men. — Paulo Freire

Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students. — Paulo Freire

Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness. — Paulo Freire

The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. — 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 (Freire, 1970, p. 54). — Paulo Freire

P53-knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, the restless,impatient,continuing,hopeful inquiry beings pursue with the world and with others. — Paulo Freire

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. — Paulo Freire

To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them. — Paulo Freire

The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors." "They call themselves ignorant and say the 'professor' is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen." "Almost never do they realize that they, too, 'know things' they have learned in their relations with the world. — Paulo Freire

The object of a dialogical-liberterian action is not to 'dislodge' the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to 'bind' them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality." "In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. — 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

To teach is part of the very fabric of learning. — Paulo Freire

Some may think that to affirm dialogue - the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world - is naively and subjectively idealistic. there is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans. — Paulo Freire

From the first, the act of conquest, which reduces persons to the status of things, is necrophilia — Paulo Freire

We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity ... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit. — Paulo Freire

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. — Paulo Freire

No one goes anywhere alone, least of all into exile - not even those who arrive physically alone, unaccompanied by family, spouse, children, parents, or siblings. No one leaves his or her world without having been transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in a time of misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence possibly now forgotten by the one who had said it. — Paulo Freire

P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women. — Paulo Freire