Paulo Freire Quotes – Inspirational Words to Empower Education and Social Change

Education is 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.

Nobody liberates anybody else. People liberate themselves together.

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.

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 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.

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.

The teacher’s task is to initiate the learner into the language of the community being taught by means of the generative theme, which involves the researching of reality.

Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret their own experiences. Indeed, once they have achieved a certain level of literacy, through their reading they can learn new ways to think and act.

The unique worth of the ‘banking’ concept of education is not in the content it teaches, nor in any skills it develops, but rather in the way it transforms students into objects.

Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.

The banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.

Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.

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

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.

Education is suffering from narration sickness.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and 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.

Experience shows that the students’ invasions of their own territory are as transgressive as their interventions in the world of others.

Education is a constant invitation to discovery.

The limit situation of oppression is reflected in the false position of those who oppress, who become weak themselves because they dehumanize others.

Domesticating the oppressed to the point where they become objects of museum-like curiosity is tantamount to promoting the false is hoped, cowardly consciousness of the oppressor.

The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves.

The world is not something to be merely described or explained. It is something to be transformed.

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

In order for the oppressed to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform.

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

What human beings can be, they must be. They must have goals for themselves.

The process of humanization lies not within pedagogy, but rather in politics.

The oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves.

The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves.

The oppressed, as objects, as things, have no purposes except those their oppressors prescribe for them.

The solution is not to suppress ideology but to liberate the oppressed and the oppressors as well.

Revolutionary leaders cannot think outdated prescriptions; they must constantly be open to new solutions, new methods of changing reality, and new ways of promoting liberation.

The great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.

Action and reflection occur simultaneously.

The banking system is a reliable ally of this dehumanizing practice of the world because it creates a field of knowledge that fosters the naive consciousness of the oppressed and as a result is a guarantee of the system’s preservation.

The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being.

The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.

The more completely the majority fully identifies with the oppressed, the more difficult becomes the task of organizing them and the more urgent the detachment in order to avoid betrayal and alienation.

This is the truth of the oppressor he cannot know.

The more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and oppress them.

One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program that fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people.

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation, and themselves as the creative instruments for its overcoming.

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

People who commit themselves to the liberation of mankind must take seriously the work of freely building, within history, a human world.

The decay of the oppressed becomes generalized as the oppressor himself is dehumanized.

It is not enough to know what one wants. One must also know how to go about achieving it; otherwise, goals may be exaggerated and become caricatures of interests.

The oppressed, as objects, as things, have no purposes but those that are held by their oppressors.