Top 100 Quotes About Freire
#1. I am certainly influenced by certain post-structuralist traditions but also a number of other theoretical archives as well - including the brilliant work of Paulo Freire, Zygmunt Bauman, Loic Wacquant, Nancy Fraser, Tony Judt, and others.
Henry Giroux
#2. Generally in life, knowledge is acquired to be used. But school learning more often fits Freire's apt metaphor: knowledge is treated like money, to be put away in a bank for the future.
Seymour Papert
#3. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).
Paulo Freire
#4. The earliest language was body language and, since this language is the language of questions, if we limit the questions, and if we only pay attention to or place values on spoken or written language, then we are ruling out a large area of human language.
Paulo Freire
#5. Education is suffering from narration sickness.
Paulo Freire
#6. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.
Paulo Freire
#8. Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.
Paulo Freire
#9. Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of opposites permanence and change.
Paulo Freire
#10. Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood
Paulo Freire
#11. He was a teacher with good thinks of the life and education but he espress with a sentence.
Paulo Freire
#12. One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success.
Paulo Freire
#13. Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.
Paulo Freire
#14. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both
Paulo Freire
#15. Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire
#16. P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women.
Paulo Freire
#17. P29 - the oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guideline are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility.
Paulo Freire
#19. 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.
Paulo Freire
#20. Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming.
Paulo Freire
#21. This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade
Paulo Freire
#22. It's really not possible for someone to imagine himself/herself as a subject in the process of becoming without having at the same time a disposition for change. And change of which she/he is not merely the victim but the subject.
Paulo Freire
#23. ... Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle ...
Paulo Freire
#24. 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
Paulo Freire
#25. P46- As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically "accept" their exploitation.
Paulo Freire
#26. P21 the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it, this person is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue.
Paulo Freire
#27. It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.
Paulo Freire
#28. 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.
Paulo Freire
#29. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.
Paulo Freire
#30. Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage
Paulo Freire
#31. P40- for the oppressors..to 'be' is to have and to be the class of the "haves".
Paulo Freire
#32. P26 - Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.
Paulo Freire
#33. To teach is part of the very fabric of learning.
Paulo Freire
#34. History make us smarter. Learn it before being to late.
Ricardo Freire
#35. It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.
Paulo Freire
#36. There is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been taught.
Paulo Freire
#37. Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.
Paulo Freire
#38. 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.
Paulo Freire
#39. One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming.
Paulo Freire
#41. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.
Paulo Freire
#42. If i am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a certain dream or vision for it, i must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it.
Paulo Freire
#43. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Paulo Freire
#44. Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.
Paulo Freire
#46. The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.
Paulo Freire
#47. P68- when a word is deprived of its dimension of action,reflection automatically suffers as well and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism,into an alienated and alienating "blah". It becomes an empty word that cant denounce the world.
Paulo Freire
#48. 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.
Paulo Freire
#49. To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.
Paulo Freire
#50. Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.
Paulo Freire
#51. The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.
Paulo Freire
#52. 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.
Paulo Freire
#53. 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.
Paulo Freire
#54. No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.
Paulo Freire
#55. To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them.
Paulo Freire
#56. Teacher preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history.
Paulo Freire
#57. 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
#58. If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.
Paulo Freire
#59. P42- the oppressed, as objects, as "things", have no purposes except those their oppressors prescribe for them.
Paulo Freire
#60. I am dealing with people and not with things. And, because I am dealing with people, I cannot refuse my wholehearted and loving attention, even in personal matters, where I see that a student is in need of such attention.
Paulo Freire
#61. 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.
Paulo Freire
#62. [Humans'] capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity.
Paulo Freire
#63. Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
Paulo Freire
#64. P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness.
Paulo Freire
#65. I hope at least that the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love
Paulo Freire
#66. Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah, " and practice, pure activism.
Paulo Freire
#67. It is in our incompleteness, of which we are aware, that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished.
Paulo Freire
#68. 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.
Paulo Freire
#69. P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence".
Paulo Freire
#70. P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them.
P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality.
Paulo Freire
#72. One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge men's consciousness.
Paulo Freire
#73. 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
#74. P69- word is not the privilege of some few persons but the right of everyone
Paulo Freire
#75. 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
#76. Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.
Paulo Freire
#77. Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.
Paulo Freire
#78. Studying is a preparation for knowing; it is a patient and impatient exercise on the part of someone whose intent is not to know it all at once but to struggle to meet the timing of knowledge.
Paulo Freire
#79. The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors." "They call themselves ignorant and say the 'professor' is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen." "Almost never do they realize that they, too, 'know things' they have learned in their relations with the world.
Paulo Freire
#80. This is the sense in which I am obliged to be a listener. To listen to the student's doubts, fears, and incompetencies that are part of the learning process. It is in listening to the student that I learn to speak with him or her.
Paulo Freire
#81. I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.
Paulo Freire
#82. The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.
Paulo Freire
#83. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity" the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.
Paulo Freire
#84. Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.
Paulo Freire
#85. Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them';
Paulo Freire
#86. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.
Paulo Freire
#87. The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.
Paulo Freire
#88. The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual.
Paulo Freire
#89. It doesnt hurt to repeat here the statement, still rejected by many people in spite of its obviousness, that education is a political act.
Paulo Freire
#90. Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.
Paulo Freire
#92. It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle.
Paulo Freire
#93. P14 - People educate each other through the mediation of the world
Paulo Freire
#94. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.
Paulo Freire
#95. The future isn't something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.
Paulo Freire
#96. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people's historicity as their starting point.
Paulo Freire
#97. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.
Paulo Freire
#98. This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
Paulo Freire
#99. Reading the word and learning how to write the word so one can later read it are preceded by learning how to write the world, that is having the experience of changing the world and touching the world.
Paulo Freire
#100. The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in the school, where the students soon discover thatin order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have ben set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.
Paulo Freire
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