Quote collection
178 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"... studying is a preparation for knowing; it is a patient and impatient exercise on the part of someone whose intent is not to know it all at once but to struggle to meet the timing of knowledge."
"An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah.” It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action."
"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."
"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."
"There is, in fact, no teaching without learning."
"Love is an act of courage."
"I am an educator who thinks globally."
"The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority."
"For people, 'here' signifies not merely a physical space, but also an historical space."
"Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them."
"Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming."
"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."
"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, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority."
"Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students."
"Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently."
"The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders."
"I hope at least that the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love"
"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."
"If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings."
"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity."