Paulo Freire

"The oppressed are not autonomous and cannot govern themselves; they are governed by the oppressors."

"Transformation of reality requires ongoing reflection and action."

"We can only become truly human through commitment to the humanization of all people."

"The privilege of absolute knowledge belongs to no one, not even to scholars."

"In dialogical education, the teacher and student are both learners, both teachers."

"Conscientization is achieved through the problem-posing dialogue between educators and learners."

"Freedom is not an ideal to be pursued; it is a practice to be engaged in."

"The answer to oppression is not counter-oppression but the liberation of all."

"Faith is the root of hope, and hope sustains the struggle for liberation."

"Humanization begins when one person recognizes their own humanity in the eyes of another."

"The dehumanization that oppression creates requires a response of love to break its cycle."

"Every person has the capacity to learn and to transform their consciousness."

"Education is the practice of freedom, the means by which people deal with reality and discover how to transform it."

"No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so."

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful."

"The oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity, become oppressors of the oppressors."

"Speak a true word and you will change the world."

"We must dare to think about thinking. We must dare to think about life itself."

"Reading the word is always preceded by reading the world."

"To be human is not to be in static being, but in becoming."

"Hope is an ontological need."

"The task of the dialogical teacher is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge."

"Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order."

"Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry."

"The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world."

"Conscientization is the deepening of the attitude of awareness to reality."

"Freedom is not yet the true freedom. True freedom is yet to come."

"I cannot think for others or without others, nor can others think for me."

"The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves."

"We are made for greatness, for infinity, for God."