Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is not suprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings.
It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.
What if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to become fully human?
This capacity to go beyond the factors of conditioning is one of the obvious advantages of the human person.
Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.
The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.
One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success.
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.
The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
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.
To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.
Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.
Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.
It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.
In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity" the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.
The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.
Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student.
The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.
It doesnt hurt to repeat here the statement, still rejected by many people in spite of its obviousness, that education is a political act.
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.
Teacher preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history.
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.
The role of the educator is one of tranquil possession of certitude in regard to the teaching of not only contents but also of 'correct thinking.'
The world is split between those who do not sleep because they are hungry and those who do not sleep because they are afraid of those who are hungry.
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.
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.
Education is freedom. Education will teach you how to do it yourself as opposed to asking someone else to do it for you. And around it our own town... Freemanville!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
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.
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.
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.