All Quotes

"The excess of power which has characterized our culture from the start created on the one hand an almost masochistic desire to submit to that power and on the other a desire to be all-powerful. This habit of submission led men to adapt and adjust to their circumstances, instead of seeking to integrate themselves with reality. Integration, the behavior characteristic of flexibly democratic regimes, requires a maximum capacity for critical thought. In contrast, the adapted man, neither dialoguing nor participating, accommodates to conditions imposed upon him and thereby acquires an authoritarian and acritical frame of mind."

"Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which a subject transformed into an object docilely and passively accepts the contents others give or impose on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary, necessitates the curious presence of subjects confronted with the world. It requires their transforming action on reality. It demands a constant searching. It implies invention and reinvention. It claims from each person a reflection on the very act of knowing."

"Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others."

"I had some personal problems, and I started listening to a lot of radio ministers. I listened every Sunday all day, flipping the dial up and back. So, I heard just about every guy on Sunday. And then I heard Mr. Armstrong, and I said, "Ah, God has finally shown me the one, I guess.""

"Knowing is the task of Subjects, not of objects. It is as a subject, and only as such, that a man or woman can really know. In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriated learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with "contents" whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged."

"The best student in physics or mathematics, at school or university, is not one who memorizes formulae but one who is aware of the reason for them. For students, the more simply and docilely they receive the contents with which their teachers "fill" them in the name of knowledge, the less they are able to think and the more they become merely repetitive. The best philosophy student is not one who discourses, "ipsis verbis," on the philosophy of Plato, Marx, or Kant but one who thinks critically about their ideas and takes the risk of thinking too."

"If education is the relation between Subjects in the knowing process mediated by the knowable object, in which the educator permanently reconstructs the act of knowing, it must then be problem-posing. The task of the educator is to present to the educatees as a problem the content which mediates them, and not to discourse on it, give it, extend it, or hand it over, as if it were a matter of something already done, constituted, completed, and finished."

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

"It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either."

"(What do you think Paulo Freire would say about how his theories are used today?) I think he would be generally appalled by the current teach-to-test doctrines. (What do you think a Freirean university would look like today?) Instruction should reject the notion of education as pouring water into a vessel, in favor of engaging students in an active quest for understanding in a faculty-student cooperative environment. To a significant extent something like that is true of science teaching, at its best, sometimes elsewhere. (If students took just one thing away from reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed what would you hope it would be?) They should recognize that education should be a process of self-discovery, of developing one's own capacities and pursuing interests and concerns with an open and independent mind, all in cooperation with others."

"In our culture, so often, people teach beliefs, values, ideas, that have no relationship to how they live their lives. And each of the many times that I saw Paulo, I saw him exemplify again and again a unity between theory and praxis. And that has inspired me both as an intellectual and as a teacher to want to have that kind of unity, to believe and to know that it’s not a dream or a fantasy, but that you can teach by being in the world as much as you can by the books you write."

"I urge my students que se aprovechen el momento of their college years; to look beyond conventional career-oriented concerns toward something deeper, toward the discomfort and wonder of real conciencia, which comes, as the educator Paulo Freire understood, through a self-determined, self-defined education."

"He hoped that Britain and Canada would have "a healthy and cordial alliance. Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation, a subordinate but still a powerful people to stand by her in North America in peace or in war.""

"the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics .. the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be."

"As for myself, my course is clear. A British subject I was born — a British subject I will die. With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the ‘veiled treason’ which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance."

"Let us be English or let us be French, but above all let us be Canadians"

"Yes, but the people would prefer John A. drunk to George Brown sober."

"There are, I believe, two grounds for rejecting the EMS. The first is economic. It is based, I believe, upon a false analysis of the cause of inflation and the lack of growth, which are essential components in the creation of unemployment. The second ground is political. It is equally as important as the first, and is not simply a political aspect. Acceptance of the EMS is a first essential step towards economic and monetary union, which is at the heart of a federal Europe."

"I can tell you I'm pretty middle-class."

"I will have failed in this if in five years there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I want you to hold me to it."

"The Green Belt is a Labour achievement — and we mean to build on it."

"Because of the security reasons for one thing and, second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about. Have you got another silly question?"

"We now have a satisfactory solution not only to coalition forces, but also to the Iraqi authorities themselves."

"This was released I think in February and so it is a great deal of fuss being made, it hasn't in fact been given public release, it was released in February ..."

"It is a fact that homelessness has continued to rise. It doubled under the previous Administration, but that does not help us. The Government intend to reduce — and probably eliminate — the homeless by 2008. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but the House knows that I have problems with English. I did not go to public school, so there is a limit to what I am able to say. Opposition Members can be such twits. We believe that we can eliminate the problem of homelessness by providing more resources, which is precisely what we are doing."

"Look I’ve got my old pledge card a bit battered and crumpled, we said we’d provide more turches churches teachers and we have. I can remember when people used to say the Japanese are better than us, the Germans are better than us, the French are better than us — well it’s great to be able to say we’re better than them. I think Mr Kennedy well we all congratulate on his baby and the Tories are you remembering what I’m remembering boom and bust negative equity, remember Mr Howard, I mean are you thinking what I’m thinking I’m remembering, it’s all a bit wonky isn’t it?"

"When I see that man on the telly — 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' No! I'm definitely not! I find most of it quite offensive!"

"I notice from the papers and on television today that the Tories have now brought in a new person to get people to vote Tory, and I could not help noticing that the person is named, as I saw on the website, "Mr. Tosser". I do not know which person on the Front Bench this man is modelled on, but let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that I always thought that his party was full of them, and that is why they have lost three elections."

"In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force."

"White can always play differently, in which case he merely loses differently."

"They can't concentrate, they don't have stamina, and they aren't creative. They are all fish."

"You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time. You lug around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You shouldn't be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are stupid. They shouldn't have any women in there. They don't know how to teach. And they shouldn't make anyone go to school. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen."

"I don't like American girls. They're very conceited, you know. In Europe they're more pleasant."

"Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that."

"They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat."

"I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree."

"Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like."

"Part Jewish. My mother is Jewish."

"I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me."

"I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all."

"They have nothing on me, those guys. They can't even touch me. Some people rate them better than me. That really bugs me. They think that no Americans play chess. When I meet those Russian patzers I'll put them in their place."

"When I was eleven, I just got good."

"Tactics flow from a positionally superior game."

"Best by test."

"I have never opened with the QP – on principle."

"Patzer sees a check, gives a check."

"I'll play a lot, stake matches. Not like the Russians. They win the championship and then hide for three years. Every few months, anyway twice a year, I'd like to get up a purse and meet a challenger. It's good for the game, keeps up interest in chess, and it's good for the bank account. I want to get some money together. Like take professional football. All these athletes making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Contracts, endorsements. If there's room for all of them, there ought to be room for one of me. I mean, after all, I'm a great goodwill ambassador for the United States!"

"I am the best player in the world, and I am here to prove it."

"I have a minus score (against Spassky). I lost 3 and drew 2. I was better than him when I lost those games. I pressed for the win. My overall tournament record is much better than his. I'm not afraid of him, he's afraid of me."

"I'm not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I'm the best. You don't need a match to prove it."