Great Throughts Treasury

"At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration."

"At times, I have been criticized by some philosophers of education, who place me in postures that they classify pejoratively as 'revolutionary.' But I have had the satisfaction of being invited to work in societies making progressive efforts without wavering. They were changing, and so they called on me."

"As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power."

"Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building."

"Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible."

"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."

"Autonomy is the result of a process involving various and innumerable decisions."

"Conscientization is natural because unfinishedness is integral to the phenomenon of life itself, which besides women and men includes the cherry trees in my garden and the birds that sing in their branches."

"Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation."

"Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah," and practice, pure activism."

"Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality."

"Critical perception cannot be imposed."

"Curiosity as restless questioning, as movement toward the revelation of something hidden, as a question verbalized or not, as search for clarity, as a moment of attention, suggestion, and vigilance, constitutes an integral part of the phenomenon of being alive. There could be no creativity without the curiosity that moves us and sets us patiently impatient before a world that we did not make, to add to it something of our own making."

"Dialogue cannot exist without humility."

"Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed."

"Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people."

"Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression."

"Education does not make us educable. It is our awareness of being unfinished that makes us educable."

"Education is freedom."

"Finally, cultural revolution develops the practice of permanent dialogue between leaders and people and consolidates the participation of the people in power."

"Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue."

"For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority."

"For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space."

"Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies."

"For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in a revolution. Whether one calls this correct thinking 'revolutionary consciousness' or 'class consciousness,' it is an indispensable precondition of revolution. The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep people from thinking."

"For them, having more is an inalienable right."

"For us, to learn is to construct, to reconstruct, to observe with a view to changing?none of which can be done without being open to risk, to the adventure of the spirit."

"Hope is a natural, possible, and necessary impetus in the context of our unfinishedness."

"Freedom is not the absence of limits. What I have sought always is to live the tension, the contradiction, between authority and freedom so as to maintain respect for both."

"Founding itself upon love, humility, and faith, dialogue becomes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is a logical consequence."

"How can I be an educator if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student, which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching and to the education process itself."

"How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?"

"Hope is not just a question of grit or courage. It's an ontological dimension of our human condition."

"How can the oppressed, as divided unauthentic beings, participate in the pedagogy of their liberation?"

"I am an educator who thinks globally."

"Humans' capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity."

"Humility cannot demand that I submit myself to the arrogance and stupidity of those who do not respect me. What humility asks of me when I cannot react appropriately to a given offense is to face it with dignity. The dignity of my silence, of my look."

"I am not impartial or objective; not a fixed observer of facts and happenings."

"I am dealing with people and not with things. And, because I am dealing with people, I cannot refuse my wholehearted and loving attention, even in personal matters, where I see that a student is in need of such attention."

"I can only dislike what I am doing under the pain of not doing it well."

"I cannot be a teacher and be in favor of everyone and everything. I cannot be in favor merely of people, humanity, vague phrases far from the concrete nature of educative practice."

"I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am."

"I interpret the revolutionary process as dialogical cultural action which is prolonged in 'cultural revolution' once power is taken. In both stages a serious and profound effort at conscience--by means of which the people, through a true praxis, leave behind the status of objects to assume the status of historical Subjects--is necessary."

"I like to be human because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence."

"I feel it is necessary to overcome the false separation between serious teaching and the expression of feeling."

"I teach because I search, because I question, and because I submit myself to questioning."

"If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined."

"Ideology is directly linked to that tendency within us to cloak over the truth of the facts, using language to cloud or turn opaque what we wish to hide."

"In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature."

"In a dynamic, rather than static, view of revolution, there is no absolute 'before' or 'after,' with the taking of power as the dividing line."