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

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.

Don’t depend on someone else’s plumages to define your beauty. You have brighter and beautiful feathers. Just fly with them!

Homer was wrong in saying, "Would that strife might pass away from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

You know, I think what people want more than anything is they just want people to do what they say they're going to do.

I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories.

I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No nuances. I stay away from psychoanalyst's couch scenes. Couches are good for one thing.

I've always subscribed to the notion that a writer always has something else to say, and the more you write, the more you have to write about, because the act of writing is self-generating.

All too often, when people don't know where they are, have jet lag, don't speak the language, and can't figure out the money or maintain intestinal regularity, they get hostile.

Fears of creating new kinds of plagues or of altering human evolution or of irreversibly altering the environment were only some of the concerns that were rampant.

All these teenagers tell us how much they want to grow up and then when they do they want to be young again.