57 Paulo Freire Quotes From The Brazilian Educator

Paulo Freire was born on 19 September 1921 in Recife, State of Pernambuco, Brazil.

He grew up in the Northeast of Brazil, a place that deeply influenced his life's work. Paulo Freire spent his life working to improve the conditions of education for all human beings in society.

While at the Faculty of Law in Recife, Freire met his wife, Elza Oliveira, a teacher. They wedded in 1944 when Freire was 23 and had five children, three of whom became teachers themselves. There are so many Paulo Freire quotes about teaching, including the famous line: "Teaching and learning are reciprocal acts. You can't do one without the other, at least not if you're doing it right."

Let's take a look at a few Paulo Freire teacher quotes that will certainly interest you. If you like these Paulo Freire quotes, you can also read these Charlotte Mason quotes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quotes.

Here are a few Paulo Freire quotes on education.

1. "Language is never neutral."

- Paulo Freire.

2. "Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information."

- Paulo Freire.

3. "At times, I have been criticized by some philosophers of education, who place me in postures that they classify pejoratively as 'revolutionary.'"

- Paulo Freire.

4. "Society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society."

- Paulo Freire.

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

- Paulo Freire.

6. "It is not systematic education which somehow molds society."

- Paulo Freire.

7. "Education is freedom."

- Paulo Freire.

8. "It’s no sin to make a critical study of Brazil’s reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don’t."

- Paulo Freire.

9. "Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety."

- Paulo Freire.

10. "I am an educator who thinks globally."

- Paulo Freire.

11. "It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation."

- Paulo Freire.

12. "Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination."

- Paulo Freire.

13. "Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation."

- Paulo Freire.

14. "The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people."

- Paulo Freire.

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

- Paulo Freire.

16. "He was a teacher with good thinks of the life and education but he expresses with a sentence."

- Paulo Freire.

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

- Paulo Freire.

18. "The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom."

- Paulo Freire.

19. "Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society."

- Paulo Freire.

20. "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."

- Paulo Freire.

21. "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."

- Paulo Freire.

Here are a few Paulo Freire quotes about literacy for you.

22. "To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them."

- Paulo Freire.

23. "Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them."

- Paulo Freire.

24. "The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence."

- Paulo Freire.

25. "People educate each other through the mediation of the world"

- Paulo Freire.

26. "Teaching cannot be a process of transference of knowledge from the one teaching to the learner."

- Paulo Freire.

27. "And in the struggle, this pedagogy will be made and remade."

- Paulo Freire.

28. "Accepting my limitations, yet always conscious of the necessary effort to overcome them and aware that I cannot hide them because to do so would be a failure."

- Paulo Freire.

Let's take a look at some Paulo Freire quotes on the empowerment of men and women.

29. "No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are."

- Paulo Freire.

30. "The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors."

- Paulo Freire.

31. "Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them."

- Paulo Freire.

32. "Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information."

- Paulo Freire.

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

- Paulo Freire.

Paulo Freire Quotes On Teaching

Have a look at some Paulo Freire quotes on teaching here.

34. "Teachers who do not take their own education seriously, who do not study, who make little effort to keep abreast of events have no moral authority to coordinate the activities of the classroom."

- Paulo Freire.

35. "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."

- Paulo Freire.

36. "The educator has the duty of not being neutral."

- Paulo Freire.

37. "In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider knowing nothing..."

- Paulo Freire.

38. "Teacher preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history."

- Paulo Freire.

39. "To teach is part of the very fabric of learning."

- Paulo Freire.

40. "The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach."

- Paulo Freire.

41. "Sometimes a simple, almost insignificant gesture on the part of a teacher can have a profound formative effect on the life of a student."

- Paulo Freire.

42. “What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”

― Paulo Freire, 'We Make The Road By Walking'.

Here are some philosophy quotes by Paulo Freire.

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

- Paulo Freire.

44. "No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent."

- Paulo Freire.

45. "No reality transforms itself."

- Paulo Freire.

46. "There is, in fact, no teaching without learning."

- Paulo Freire.

47. "One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming."

- Paulo Freire.

48. "Only through communication can human life hold meaning."

- Paulo Freire.

49. "Love is an act of courage."

- Paulo Freire.

50. "This is the road I have tried to follow as a teacher: living my convictions; being open to the process of knowing and being sensitive to the experience of teaching as an art."

- Paulo Freire.

Paulo Freire's, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed', is considered as one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement. Here are few quotes from his work.

51. "This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

52. "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."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

53. "Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

54. "With the ideological intent of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression..."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

55. "Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

56. "For the oppressors... to 'be' is to have and to be the class of the haves."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

57. "The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders."

- Paulo Freire, 'Pedagogy Of The Oppressed'

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 50+ Paulo Freire quotes from the Brazilian educator, why not look at these Montessori quotes and Horace Mann quotes too?