Paulo Freire Quotes

There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

An old African leader says about leadership, he says that leadership should never be shared; it should always remain in the hands of the dispossessed people. We will lead the revolution.

We happen to be the vanguard of that revolutionary struggle because we are the most dispossessed.

When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.

Create power for the powerless.

Of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation - is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society.

The condemned social order has not been built up on paper and ink, and I don't fancy that a combination of paper and ink will ever put an end to it.

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

If you give me carte blanche for any destruction and any revolutionary transformations, if that is what you want, then for God's sake, we will do it. The issue is not me: the issue is society.

The 'Grace of Kings' begins as a very dark, complicated world filled with injustices - among them the oppressed position of women - but gradually transforms into something better through a series of revolutions. But since real social change takes a long time, even by the end of the book, only the seeds of deep change have been planted.

The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.

At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change.

Only when the oppressed are heard can we have an honest solutions based dialogue.

I think hip-hop has always been political because this is a community that doesn't have any other choice.

As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.

Black people have to define who we are, or others do it for us.

We need more courageous individuals who will defy the structures of power, whether political, economic, or intimate, but we also need it to be safe for people to feel their power and to be able to express their ideas and imagine without fear.

Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.

It's not like a choice to have an identity politics discussion when you're living it all the time. And if it's uncomfortable, well then maybe the way that we need to deal with that is by letting things be uncomfortable.

For black and brown people, caring for ourselves and each other is not a neutral act. It is a necessary and radical part of the struggle to create a more just society. Our healing and survival are essential to the fight.

... within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation.

It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary.