Gilmara Freire Quotes

No one goes anywhere alone, least of all into exile - not even those who arrive physically alone, unaccompanied by family, spouse, children, parents, or siblings. No one leaves his or her world without having been transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in a time of misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence possibly now forgotten by the one who had said it. ~ Paulo Freire

The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. ~ Paulo Freire

[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. ~ Paulo Freire

To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce. ~ Paulo Freire

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie. ~ Paulo Freire

P68- 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 that cant denounce the world. ~ Paulo Freire

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed ~ Paulo Freire

Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life. ~ Paulo Freire

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed ~ Paulo Freire

P69- word is not the privilege of some few persons but the right of everyone ~ Paulo Freire

The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.' ~ Paulo Freire

Education is freedom. ~ Paulo Freire

It is in our incompleteness, of which we are aware, that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished. ~ Paulo Freire

Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them. ~ Paulo Freire

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. ~ Paulo Freire

It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't. ~ Paulo Freire

The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women. ~ Paulo Freire

If i am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a certain dream or vision for it, i must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it. ~ Paulo Freire

Finally, it is important to make it clear that imagination is not an exercise for those detached from reality, those who live in the air. On the contrary, when we imagine something, we do it necessarily conditioned by a lack in our concrete reality. When children imagine free and happy schools, it is because their real schools deny them freedom and happiness. ~ Paulo Freire

...the fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other... Theirs is a fundamental role, and has been throughout the history of this struggle. It happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to want, and to know. Accordingly, these adherents to the people's cause constantly run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as malefic as that of the oppressors. The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust. ~ Paulo Freire

Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. ~ Paulo Freire

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. ~ Paulo Freire

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. ~ Paulo Freire

I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power. ~ Paulo Freire

But one does not liberate someone by alienating them. Authentic liberation
the process of humanization
is not another deposit to be made in a person. Liberation is a praxis: action and reflection upon the world in order to transform it. Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking [pedagogical] methods of domination (propaganda, slogans
deposits) in the name of liberation. ~ Paulo Freire

The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual. ~ Paulo Freire

Libertarian action must recognize this dependence as a weak point and must attempt through reflection and action to transform it into independence. However, not even the best-intentioned leadership can bestow independence as a gift. The liberation of the oppressed is a liberation of women and men, not things. Accordingly, while no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Liberation, a human phenomenon, cannot be achieved by semihumans. Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them. ~ Paulo Freire

P17 - Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic. ~ Paulo Freire

Coherently democratic authority carries the conviction that true discipline does not exist in the muteness of those who have been silenced but in the stirrings of those who have been challenged, in the doubt of those who have been prodded, and in the hopes of those who have been awakened. ~ Paulo Freire

I do not accept history as determinism. I embrace history as possibility [where] we can demystify the evil in this perverse fatalism that characterizes the neoliberal discourse in the end of this century. ~ Paulo Freire

P14 - People educate each other through the mediation of the world ~ Paulo Freire

With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation. ~ Paulo Freire

The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role impressed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. ~ Paulo Freire

P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them.
P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality. ~ Paulo Freire

It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them. ~ Paulo Freire