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Paulo Freire

108 quotes

“Dialogue cannot exist without humility.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Founding itself upon love, humility, and faith, dialogue becomes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is a logical consequence.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trust is established by dialogue.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students-teachers in pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The revolutionary's role is to liberate, and to be liberated, with the people—not to win them over.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who are served by the present limit-situation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and act to maintain the status quo.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality and towards self-awareness, which makes this investigation a starting point for the educational process or for cultural action of a liberating character.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means which people discover each other to be 'in a situation.'”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more educators and the people investigate the people's thinking, and are thus jointly educated, the more they continue to investigate.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Critical perception cannot be imposed.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal contradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the inhabitants' awareness of these contradictions.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One might say they failed to perceive the untested feasibility lying beyond the limit-situations which engendered their needs.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The thematics which have come from the people return to them—not as contents to be deposited, but as problems to be solved.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is when the majorities are denied their right to participate in history as Subjects that they become dominated and alienated.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders, on the other hand, cannot believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The task of revolutionary leaders is to pose as problems not only this myth, but all the other myths used by the oppressor elites to oppress.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a dynamic, rather than static, view of revolution, there is no absolute 'before' or 'after,' with the taking of power as the dividing line.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given—something to which people, as mere spectators, must adapt.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is accomplished by the oppressors depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened—if their work does not belong to them—the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in a revolution. Whether one calls this correct thinking 'revolutionary consciousness' or 'class consciousness,' it is an indispensable precondition of revolution. The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep people from thinking.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in school, where students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The participants begin to realize that if their analysis of the situation goes any deeper they will either have to divest themselves of their myths, or reaffirm them. Divesting themselves of and renouncing their myths represents, at that moment, an act of self-violence. On the other hand, to reaffirm those myths is to reveal themselves.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The culture of the dominant class hinders the affirmation of men as beings of decision.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I interpret the revolutionary process as dialogical cultural action which is prolonged in 'cultural revolution' once power is taken. In both stages a serious and profound effort at conscientização—by means of which the people, through a true praxis, leave behind the status of objects to assume the status of historical Subjects—is necessary.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally, cultural revolution develops the practice of permanent dialogue between leaders and people and consolidates the participation of the people in power.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The behavior and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the oppressor to practice cultural invasion, should evoke from the revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their objectives, but their procedures.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The object of a dialogical-libertarian 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.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Organization is not only directly linked to unity, but a natural development of that unity. Accordingly, the leaders' pursuit of that unity is also an attempt to organize the people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a theory of action.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders—in their communion, in their praxis—can this theory be built.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Integration with one's context, as distinguished from adaptation, is a distinctively human activity. Integration results from the capacity to adapt oneself to reality plus the critical capacity to make choices and to transform that reality. To the extent that man loses his ability to make choices and is subjected to the choices of others, to the extent that his decisions are no longer his own because they result from external prescriptions, he is no longer integrated. Rather, he has adapted. He has "adjusted." Unpliant men, with a revolutionary spirit, are often termed "maladjusted.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The integrated person is person as Subject. In contrast, the adaptive person is person as object, adaptation representing at most a weak form of self-defense. If man is incapable of changing reality, he adjusts himself instead. Adaptation is behavior characteristic of the animal sphere; exhibited by man, it is symptomatic of his dehumanization.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unfortunately, what happens to a greater or lesser degree in the various "worlds" into which the world is divided is that the ordinary person is crushed, diminished, converted into a spectator, maneuvered by myths which powerful social forces have created. These myths turn against him; they destroy and annihilate him. Tragically frightened, men fear authentic relationships and even doubt the possibility of their existence.”
Paulo Freire (1921–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source