110+ Paulo Freire Quotes On Oppression, Education And Critical

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who developed a revolutionary approach to education known as critical pedagogy. His philosophy of education focused on dialogue and problem-solving, and emphasized the importance of the student's experience and knowledge. Freire's ideas have been influential in the development of progressive educational approaches around the world. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Paulo Freire on oppression, education, critical.

Top 10 Paulo Freire Quotes

1. Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.
2. No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.
3. 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.
4. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
5. 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
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.
9. Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
10. Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information

Paulo Freire Short Quotes

• If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed
• True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity.
• Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.
• The educator has the duty of not being neutral.
• Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.
• Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.
• The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.
• The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual.
• Education is suffering from narration sickness.
• The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves.

Paulo Freire Quotes About Oppression

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

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it. — Paulo Freire

How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? — Paulo Freire

This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. — Paulo Freire

One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. — Paulo Freire

To speak a true word is to transform the world. — Paulo Freire

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

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

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them. — Paulo Freire

Only through communication can human life hold meaning. — Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire Quotes About Education

Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it. — Paulo Freire

The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy. — Paulo Freire

Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage — Paulo Freire

Love is an act of courage. — Paulo Freire

Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students. — Paulo Freire

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming. — Paulo Freire

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. — Paulo Freire

There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. — Paulo Freire

No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority. — Paulo Freire

Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom. — Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire Quotes About Critical

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

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. — Paulo Freire

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

It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't. — Paulo Freire

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

Paulo Freire Quotes About People

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people. — Paulo Freire

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

For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space. — Paulo Freire

It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either. — Paulo Freire

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie. — 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

Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them. — Paulo Freire

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

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

Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men. — Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire Quotes About Leaders

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

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

The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people. — Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire Quotes About Reflects

Within the word we find two dimensions-reflection and action. If one is sacrificed even in part, the other immediately suffers. To speak a true word is to transform the world. — Paulo Freire

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

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

Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently. — Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

What if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to become fully human? — Paulo Freire

Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love. — 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

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

As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom. — Paulo Freire

... 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

When we live our lives with the authenticity demanded by the practice of teaching that is also learning and learning that is also teaching, we are participating in a total experience.... In this experience the beautiful, the decent, and the serious form a circle with hands joined. — Paulo Freire

There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. — Paulo Freire

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 which they can transform. — Paulo Freire

The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. — 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

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

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

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

Being tolerant does not mean acquiescing to the intolerable; it does not mean covering up disrespect; it does not mean coddling the aggressor or disguising aggression. Tolerance is the virtue that teaches us to live with the different. It teaches us to learn from and respect the different. — Paulo Freire

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

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

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

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

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator. — Paulo Freire

Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. — Paulo Freire

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

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

Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students. — Paulo Freire

The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos. — Paulo Freire

It is not suprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. — Paulo Freire

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

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. — Paulo Freire

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

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

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

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

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

This capacity to go beyond the factors of conditioning is one of the obvious advantages of the human person. — Paulo Freire

A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance. — Paulo Freire

The multitude is always in the wrong. — Paulo Freire

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs. — Paulo Freire

Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies. — 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 hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world. — Paulo Freire

The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women. — Paulo Freire

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. — Paulo Freire

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

At times, I have been criticized by some philosophers of education, who place me in postures that they classify pejoratively as 'revolutionary.' But I have had the satisfaction of being invited to work in societies making progressive efforts without wavering. They were changing, and so they called on me. — Paulo Freire

Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them. — Paulo Freire

Although the teachers or the students are not the same, the person in charge of education is being formed or re-formed as he/she teaches, and the person who is being taught forms him/herself in the process. ...There is, in fact, no teaching without learning. — Paulo Freire

language is never neutral — Paulo Freire

But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors — Paulo Freire

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

The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. — Paulo Freire

A fact which is not denied but whose truths are rationalized loses its objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth created in defense of the class of the perceiver. — Paulo Freire

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

Life Lessons by Paulo Freire

1. Paulo Freire emphasized the importance of dialogue and critical thinking as a means of empowering people to take control of their own learning and their own lives.
2. He advocated for an education system that was based on the needs of the learner and that was focused on creating meaningful learning experiences.
3. He also encouraged educators to be aware of the power dynamics at play in the classroom and to work to create an environment of mutual respect and collaboration.