Paulo Freire

The capacity to love is not something we acquire; it is our essence.

To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge.

There's no such thing as neutral education. Education is either for domestication or for freedom.

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.

Authentic liberation — which is the process of humanization — is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

The more I think about the practice of education, the more I am convinced that this practice is political.

The banking concept of education, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor, leads to the students' being treated as objects.

The educator's role is to propose problems to the students, to make them question their own assumptions about the world.

It is not possible to teach without a dream.

Hope is an ontological need.

The teacher is not merely a facilitator but also a cultural worker.

The act of studying is not simply to consume ideas, but to recreate them.

Education is suffering from 'narration sickness.'

The oppressed are not marginal; they are 'beings for others.'

The transformation of the world is a historical task, not a metaphysical one.

To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it.

The act of rebellion against the oppressors, which is the historical task of the oppressed, is itself an act of love.

The solution is not to 'integrate' the oppressed into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become 'beings for themselves.'

The educator must be a kind of gardener, cultivating the seeds of critical consciousness.

The future is not something to be predicted, but something to be created.