Paulo Freire Quotes

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 critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

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.

School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged.

Pedagogy is not about training, it is about critically educating people to be self reflective, capable of critically address their relationship with others and with the larger world. Pedagogy in this sense provides not only important critical and intellectual competencies; it also enables people to intervene critically in the world.

Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.

What is certainly true is that the American people, just like the German people, just like the British and people around the world, are seeing extraordinarily rapid change. The world is shrinking, the economies have become much more integrated and demographics are shifting.

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.

It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.

Paranoiac-critical activity makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality.

We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position... The American people have changed.

I've always done music to push people to get them to get uncomfortable in their seat so they could wrestle with things. Not to become pew potatoes, just simply sitting there, growing fat with knowledge and not applying it.

If people aren't educated, they can't question. If they can't question, they can't change anything, which is great for the status quo and all the people who can question them at their own level.

He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.

People have to live by rules in the world. Why do we pretend in school that they don't?

We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.

If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.

Education is a weapon the effect of which is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to be struck down.

Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example.

People need to know what's going on. People need to wake up.

The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic -- to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, "Do you like it? If you don't like it, change it.

Dorothy Day said - and I'm sure that Kathy Kelly would say the same thing - 'I'm working toward a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.' Now, think about that: a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently.

We have such a knee-jerk reaction to our young people, not recognizing our young people carry the torch. We condemn them for their hats worn a certain way or their hoodie worn a certain way, or their pants sagging a certain way, but the reality is, we need to meet them where they stand. We need to arm them with what they need to fight, and then we need to get the hell out the way and let them lead. That is something that is not happening in our communities.

For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.

You didn't need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.

What we would like to do is change the world - make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do.