Paulo Freire Quotes (1921-1997)

“Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which a subject transformed into an object docilely and passively accepts the contents others give or impose on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary, necessitates the curious presence of subjects confronted with the world. It requires their transforming action on reality. It demands a constant searching. It implies invention and reinvention. It claims from each person a reflection on the very act of knowing.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.”

“All the actions of the dominant class manifest its need to divide in order to facilitate the preservation of the oppressor state. Its interference in the unions, favoring certain "representatives" of the dominated classes (who actually represent the oppressor, not their own comrades); its promotion of individuals who reveal leadership capacity and could signify a threat if they were not "softened up" in this way; its distribution of benefits to some and penalties to others: all these are ways of dividing in order to preserve the system which favors the elite.”

“All the actions of the dominant class manifest its need to divide in order to facilitate the preservation of the oppressor state. Its interference in the unions, favoring certain "representatives" of the dominated classes (who actually represent the oppressor, not their own comrades); its promotion of individuals who reveal leadership capacity and could signify a threat if they were not "softened up" in this way; its distribution of benefits to some and penalties to others: all these are ways of dividing in order to preserve the system which favors the elite.”

“(What do you think Paulo Freire would say about how his theories are used today?) I think he would be generally appalled by the current teach-to-test doctrines. (What do you think a Freirean university would look like today?) Instruction should reject the notion of education as pouring water into a vessel, in favor of engaging students in an active quest for understanding in a faculty-student cooperative environment. To a significant extent something like that is true of science teaching, at its best, sometimes elsewhere. (If students took just one thing away from reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed what would you hope it would be?) They should recognize that education should be a process of self-discovery, of developing one's own capacities and pursuing interests and concerns with an open and independent mind, all in cooperation with others.”

“I urge my students que se aprovechen el momento of their college years; to look beyond conventional career-oriented concerns toward something deeper, toward the discomfort and wonder of real conciencia, which comes, as the educator Paulo Freire understood, through a self-determined, self-defined education.”