Paulo Freire Quotes

I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world.

Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

We need to create a new revolution, and to do that, don’t waste your life: stop pleasing people, and become who you always wanted to be.

You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. Besides you don't build a better world by choppin' heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs.

It is the dictate of history to bring to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment, who cohere the wishes and aspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko, a fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

Every night I get many letters, and after every talk I get many questions from people who say, "I want to change things. What can I do?" I never hear these questions from peasants in southern Colombia or Kurds in southeastern Turkey under miserable repression or anybody who is suffering. They don't ask what they can do; they tell you what they're doing.

Feminist education — the feminist classroom — is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgment of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university.

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.

The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done.

It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.

In the late '60s, people were saying we need power to, not power over. Power to do, accomplish, create, not power over other people.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.

When people decide they want to be free, there is nothing that can stop them.

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

When people made up their minds that they wanted to be free and took action, then there was a change.

There is something about participating; it is almost my religion. If the world is still here in 100 years, people will know the importance of participating, not just being spectators. Millions of small groups around the world, that don't necessarily all agree with one another, are made up of people who are not just sitting back waiting for someone to do things for them. No one can prove anything, but of course if I didn't believe it had some kind of power, I wouldn't be trying to do it.

I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.

There's no question in my mind but that rights are never won unless people are willing to fight for them.

It is terrifying to people when women step up and start owning the story that they have not owned. And I'm seeing so much of this, and it is a seismic shift.

In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done?

Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.

The people, they are the ones with the real answers.