Paulo Freire Quotations

Thoughts on dialogue, critical consciousness, transformation and cultural action

Quotations from Paulo Freire's work

These are just a selection of quotations from Paulo Freire's work, which we have grouped into themes to enable you to see the key threads running through his thinking. A lot of the most recognizable quotes are from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but we would encourage readers to look at other works by Freire, and have included some of the more significant quotations from those works below.

Critical consciousness and liberation

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

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and therefore bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed
  
"It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality, so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"To be a subject of history is to be able to name one's own reality." —Cultural Action for Freedom

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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

"At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration."
—Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Dialogue and humanization

"No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Dialogue requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"To speak a true word is to transform the world." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"To be is to be in relation to the world and to others." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The word is not my invention. It is you who make it." —Learning to Question

"Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes equality of rights, is the indispensable road to humanization." —Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau

"The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people."—Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Education as transformation

"To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them." —Education for Critical Consciousness

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

"Education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves." —Pedagogy of Freedom

"Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"There is no such thing as a neutral education process." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Teaching demands research." —Pedagogy of Freedom

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning." —Pedagogy of Freedom

"Thinking correctly requires critical thinking." —Pedagogy of Freedom

"Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves." —We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

"There is no teaching without learning." —Pedagogy of Freedom

Social justice and cultural action

"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Cultural action is always a systematic and deliberate form of action which operates upon the social structure." —Cultural Action for Freedom

"Respect for the autonomy and dignity of every person is an ethical imperative and not a favor that we can bestow on others or withhold." —Pedagogy of Freedom

"It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't." —Education for Critical Consciousness

"Welfare programs as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"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." —Education for Critical Consciousness

"I am an educator who thinks globally." —various sources

"One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies." —various sources

"We must dare to invent the future." —Pedagogy of Hope

"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." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

"Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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