All Quotes

"While no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others."

"The correct method lies in dialogue. The conviction of the oppressed that they must fight in their liberation is not a gift bestowed by the revolutionary leadership, but the result of their own conscientização."

"It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle."

"Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students."

"Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator."

"Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning."

"Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students."

"It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings."

"Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it."

"In sum: 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."

"Indeed, some revolutionaries brand as innocents, dreamers, or even reactionaries; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men."

"Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming."

"In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they existin 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."

"Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future."

"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."

"Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers."

"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. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world."

"A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation.""

"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."

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

"Dialogue cannot exist without humility."

"Someone who cannot acknowledge himself to be as mortal as everyone else still has a long way to go before he can reach the point of encounter.""

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

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

"Trust is established by dialogue."

"The dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students-teachers in pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about."

"The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity."

"Those who are served by the present limit-situation regard the untested feasibility as a threatening limit-situation which must not be allowed to materialize, and act to maintain the status quo."

"Thematic investigation thus becomes a common striving towards awareness of reality and towards self-awareness, which makes this investigation a starting point for the educational process or for cultural action of a liberating character."

"Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means which people discover each other to be 'in a situation.'"

"The more educators and the people investigate the people's thinking, and are thus jointly educated, the more they continue to investigate."

"Critical perception cannot be imposed."

"The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal contradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the inhabitants' awareness of these contradictions."

"One might say they failed to perceive the untested feasibility lying beyond the limit-situations which engendered their needs."

"Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs."

"The thematics which have come from the people return to them—not as contents to be deposited, but as problems to be solved."

"Some may think that to affirm dialogue—the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world—is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans."

"It is when the majorities are denied their right to participate in history as Subjects that they become dominated and alienated."

"People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality."

"To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders."

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

"I cannot remember a time when I did not take it as understood that everybody has at least two, if not twenty-two, sides to him."

"I knew she had eaten my father, and I was glad I did not have to fight any longer to keep her from eating me. Oh, these good, ignorant, confident women! How one grows to hate them!"

"Then I was in love with herself after all, said Diana, making one of those feminine leaps in logic that leave men breathless."

"Not that any of the women spoke; they had done their speaking before church, and their husbands knew the price of peace."

"I promised that this would be a frank record, so far as I can write one, and God forbid that I should pretend that there is not a generous measure of spite in my nature."

"If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get."

"A fool-saint is somebody who seems to be full of holiness and loves everybody and does every good act he can, but because he's a fool it all comes to nothing- to worse than nothing, because it is virtue tainted with madness, and you can't tell where it'll end up."

"He let me know that he had been led into his marriage by love, and love alone; though he did not say so it was clear he owed Cupid a grudge."

"Despite these afternoon misgivings and self-reproaches I clung to my notion, ill-defined though it was, that a serious study of any important body of human knowledge, or theory, or belief, if undertaken with a critical but not a cruel mind, would in the end yield some secret, some valuable permanent insight, into the nature of life and the true end of man."