Paulo Freire Quotes

Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.

Discipline is tough for a guy who is a rebel.

He who saith “thou shalt” to me is my mortal foe.

I'm done with rules that are there just to be rules.

I never liked being told what to do, so even in school plays, I never liked being an actor.

I don't take well to rules.

I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow.

I couldn't follow nobody's rules.

Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.

I could have begged. They made it obvious to me that if I wanted to come back and be a good boy... but I'd rather be in Roots than Good Times.

Rules equal boredom, and I don't like that.

I haven't took no punishment. There's nothing cool about taking punishment.

It was a place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break his spirit, so that he accepts that he is No. 6 and will live there happily as No. 6 for ever after. And this is the one rebel that they can't break.

I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.

You know, how much order is good? And when does order become too restrictive? Is a little bit of chaos okay, or is chaos always an evil force? I mean, these are questions that any kid who's ever been in a school cafeteria can relate to.

In being strict, you were able to control.

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren't any rules, how could you break them?

I've never reacted well to other people telling me what to do.

I was a prefect at school, I never had a tattoo, got a detention or pierced my ears more than once.