Quotes by Paulo Freire

About Paulo Freire:

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire is best known for his influential work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

I can not think for others or without others,nor can others think for me. Even if the people's thinking is superstitious or naive,it is only as they rethink their assumptions in action that they can change. Producing and acting upon their own ideas�...

Paulo Freire

P71- if i do not love the world if i do not love life if i do not love people i cannot enter into dialogue.

Paulo Freire

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

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal...

Paulo Freire

P26 - Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

Paulo Freire

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a “quick return to power,” forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible “dialogue” with the dominant elites. I...

Paulo Freire

P53-knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, the restless,impatient,continuing,hopeful inquiry beings pursue with the world and with others.

Paulo Freire

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

P69- word is not the privilege of some few persons but the right of everyone

Paulo Freire

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

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

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

Paulo Freire

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

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

P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women.

Paulo Freire

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

… Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle…

Paulo Freire

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...

Paulo Freire

The more we become able to become a child again, to keep ourselves childlike, the more we can understand that because we love the world and we are open to understanding, to comprehension, that when we kill the child in us, we are no longer.

Paulo Freire

Author Bio

  • NamePaulo Freire
  • Descriptioneducator and philosopher
  • BornSeptember 19, 1921
  • DiedMay 2, 1997
  • CountryBrazil
  • ProfessionEducationist; Author; Teacher