Paulo Freire Quotes

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).

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

I'm not trying to get power over white. I'm involved in a freedom struggle. Not a power struggle.

The basic idea of a hero rising up to represent an oppressed or disenfranchised group of people is as true to hip-hop as it is comic book lore.

The struggle of our people for freedom has progressed to the form where all of us must take a stand either for or against the freedom of our people You are either with Your People or against them. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

We've got to understand that all disenfranchised people have something in common...The pursuit of justice really is about equality for everyone.

This is beautiful indeed; the colored people have given this to the head of the government, and that government once sanctioned laws that would not permit its people to learn enough to enable them to read this book.

It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us".

Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the struggle for equal rights.

The struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience.

Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable - this is Marcos.

It was simply this: silence is not a neutral position, whatever your intentions. Silence automatically supports the status quo. When you are a presence that lacks a voice, you create an empty space that another voice - a dominating voice that knows no boundaries - is only too happy to fill.

somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.

The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise.

Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."

If there's a theme in my work, it's that I like to focus on smart people who are facing oppression and who are fighting back against it.

Unfortunate. Unfortunate. Sometimes people struggling for freedom lose their way.

I seek … the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.