Paulo Freire

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

“Just as it is important in Latin America to discuss ideas that come from North America, I think it is interesting for North Americans to discuss ideas that come from Latin America or Africa and do not insert themselves into capitalist interests.”

“P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them. P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality.”

“True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.”

“It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.”

“Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”

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

“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.”

“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.”

“Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world.”

“It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.”

“I am an educator who thinks globally.”