Paulo Freire Quotes

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

Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause--the cause of liberation.

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 oppressed

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.

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.

No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.

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

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.

It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information

It doesnt hurt to repeat here the statement, still rejected by many people in spite of its obviousness, that education is a political act.

Dialogue cannot exist without humility.

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

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

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

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

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.

Within the word we find two dimensions-reflection and action. If one is sacrificed even in part, the other immediately suffers. To speak a true word is to transform the world.

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed

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.

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.

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

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

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

Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.

To speak a true word is to transform the world.

Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage

The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.

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

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.

The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.

Only through communication can human life hold meaning.

... 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.

In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity" the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.

Love is an act of courage.

Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.

Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them.

There is, in fact, no teaching without learning.

I am an educator who thinks globally.

For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.

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

Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently.

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.