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Paulo Freire's 45 Best Phrases

Paulo Freire's 45 Best Phrases

March 28, 2024

Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997) was an influential pedagogue, educator and activist for the rights of the most disadvantaged. Born in Recife, Brazil, is considered one of the most important theorists in the field of education of the twentieth century.

Paulo Freire had to deal with poverty from birth. This personal baggage helped him to build what in his adulthood would be his theory about education. He studied law, psychology and philosophy at the University of Recife. He worked with poor communities which he introduced to literacy with a method created by himself, which is considered a variant of liberation theology, since knowing how to read and write were indispensable requisites to be able to vote in Brazil from that time.


  • Related article: "100 famous quotes and quotes about education"

Quotes and famous quotations from Paulo Freire

His legacy as a pedagogue goes beyond the borders of education. Paulo Freire was a global thinker, committed to his people and who took an active part in the literacy of excluded minorities.

In today's article let's know the best phrases of Paulo Freire .

1. The important thing, however, is that the working classes continue to learn in the very practice of their struggle to establish the limits for their concessions, that is, to teach the ruling classes the limits in which they can move.

Education should promote respect for social and labor rights.


2. The teacher's gesture was worth more than the note of ten that he gave to my writing. The professor's gesture gave me a confidence that was still obviously suspicious that it was possible to work and produce. That it was possible to trust me, but that it would be so wrong to trust beyond the limits as it was at that wrong time not to trust.

On the importance of positive reinforcement.

3. Education is an act of love, therefore, an act of value.

Paulo Freire's beautiful phrase about teaching.

4. Accepting and respecting difference is one of those virtues without which listening can not be given.

Empathy, in short, must govern our communication.

5. Pedagogy of the oppressed, ceases to be the oppressed and becomes the pedagogy of men in the process of permanent liberation.

About his pedagogical proposal.

6. Their ideal (of the oppressed) is, really, to be men, but for them, to be men, in the contradiction in which they were always and whose overcoming they do not have clear, is to be oppressors. These are his testimonies of humanity.

Famous appointment to reflect on the relations of domination.


7. My vision of literacy goes beyond ba, be, bi, bo, bu. Because it implies a critical understanding of the social, political and economic reality in which the literate is.

The depth of his philosophy is reflected in this reflection.

8. No one has the freedom to be free, but because they are not free to fight for their freedom.

Paradox to keep in mind. Free is the one who fights to be it.

9. The oppressed must be the example of themselves, in the struggle for their redemption.

Very much in line with the previous sentence.

10. In the "banking" vision of education, "knowledge", knowledge, is a donation of those who judge themselves wise to those they judge ignorant.

On the commodification in certain educational practices.

11. Education, as a practice of domination that we have been criticizing, maintaining the ingenuity of learners what they intend, within their ideological framework, is to indoctrinate them in the sense of their accommodation to the world of oppression.

Education without redemption is simple indoctrination.

12. Education as a practice of freedom, unlike that which is the practice of domination, implies the negation of the abstract, isolated, loose man, detached from the world, as well as the denial of the world as a reality absent from men.

Gregariousness is part of the consumer culture imposed by capitalism.

13. Education is constantly remade in praxis. To be, it has to be.

An essential characteristic of the teaching practice.

14. True education is praxis, reflection and action of man on the world to transform it.

The reasons for the educational event.

15. Sectarianism creates nothing because it does not love.

Dogmatic people do not know how to contribute valid ideas or debate, according to Freire.

16. The more critical a human group is, the more democratic and permeable it is.

Reflection against democratic centralism.

17. Our presence in the world, which implies choice and decision, is not a neutral presence.

Everything we do is permeated with a certain political vision.

18Children need to have the right to learn to decide, which is only done by deciding.

Children must be respected, and so the decisions of children, regardless of their financial resources.

19. Education is always a kind of theory of knowledge put into practice, it is naturally political, it has to do with purity, never with Puritanism, and it is, in itself, an experience of beauty.

Magisterial philosophical phrase by Paulo Freire.

20. Existence is life that is known as such, that it recognizes itself as finite, unfinished; that moves in time-space subjected to the intervention of what exists.

21. As a presence in history and in the world, I fight hopefully for dreams, for utopia, for hope, with a view to a critical pedagogy. And my struggle is not in vain.

An ethical struggle through praxis.

22. Education is freedom.

Perhaps, the most remembered phrase of the Brazilian pedagogue.

23. Only the power that arises from the weakness of the oppressed will be strong enough to liberate everyone.

On the power of the oppressed masses.

24. Freedom is acquired through conquest, not as a gift. It must be carried out constantly and in a responsible manner.

No civil conquest was made out of deference to the oppressors.

25. Jaspers said: "I am to the extent that others are also". Man is not an island, it is communication. So there is a close relationship between communion and the search.

Philosophical reflection about our personality based on interpersonal relationships.

26. Looking at the past should only be a means to understand more clearly who and what we are, in order to build the future more intelligently.

Phrase about time.

27. Language is never neutral.

It always has ideological and political connotations, according to Freire.

28. The trust of the people in the leaders reflects the confidence of the leaders in the people.

On good politicians.

29. It is not the unloved who initiates the disaffection, but the one who can not love because he only loves himself.

Narcissism leads to unhappiness.

30. Men are not formed in silence, they are formed in the word, in work, in action, in reflection.

About the contextual variables of each individual's learning.

31. The narration, which has as its subject the teacher, directs the students towards the mechanical memorization of the content that is narrated ... the narration turns them into containers that the teacher must fill.

A critique of the teaching rote system.

32. There is no dialogue if there is no humility, nor if there is no strong and unwavering faith in human beings.

A sample of his philanthropy.

33. There is no life without correction, without rectification.

Knowing how to forgive and forgive is absolutely essential.

34. No person ignores everything. Nobody knows everything. We all know something. We all ignore something. That's why we always learn.

We are all capable and good in some facets of life.

35. The reading of the world precedes the reading of the word.

Know and then reflect.


36. The more we are able to return to being children, to keep ourselves childish, the more we can understand why we love the world and are open to understanding, to understanding; When we kill our inner child, we are no longer.

The vitality of childhood is irreplaceable.

37. Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love that this situation made impossible. If I do not live in the world, if I do not love life, if I do not like people, I can not enter into dialogue.

Phrase to apply to our day to day.

38. To educate is to impregnate everything we do in every moment with meaning.

Nothing has pedagogical value if it does not explain or transmit an emotion.


39. I noticed a peasant and asked him how many children do you have? Three - he replied. Would you sacrifice two of your children by subjecting them to suffering, so that the third could study? No - he answered ... then, will God really do those things? ... No. It is not God who makes them. It is the pattern.

A small story that should make us reflect.

40. Sectarianization represents an obstacle to the emancipation of human beings.

Having a free and permeable thinking allows a greater integration of knowledge and knowledge.

41. Any relationship of domination, exploitation or oppression is already violence. It does not matter if it is done through drastic means or not.

About the implicit forms of violence.

42. The revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressive society.

In the line of thinkers like Lenin, Paulo Freire establishes this characterization of social revolutions.



43. As long as the oppressed continue to be unaware of the causes of their fatalistic condition, they accept their exploitation.

A kind of slave complacency.

44. Reading is not walking in words; is to take the soul from them.

Reflection that gives meaning to the knowledge acquired.

Four. Five.Men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, but tend to camouflage it, by presenting themselves as defenders of freedom.

On the prevailing hypocrisy.


TOP 20 Paulo Freire Quotes (March 2024).


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