33 Paulo Freire phrases to reflect on current education

There is no life without correction, without rectification.

It is not in silence that men are made, but in words, in work, in action-reflection.

No one is subject to anyone’s autonomy.

It is by deciding that you learn to decide.

No one is born made, no one is born marked to be this or that. On the contrary, we become this or that. We are programmed, but, to learn.

Man, as a historical being, inserted in a permanent movement of search, makes and remakes his knowledge.

In a country like Brazil, keeping hope alive is in itself a revolutionary act.

It is not in resignation, but in rebellion in the face of injustice that we will assert ourselves.

When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to be the oppressor.

Democracy does not intend to create saints, but to do justice.

We all know something. We all ignore something. That’s why we always learn.

Knowing is the task of subjects, not objects. And it is as a subject and only as a subject that man can really know.

If education alone does not transform society, without it, society does not change either.

The school will be better and better, as each being behaves as a colleague, as a friend, as a brother.

Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People transform the world.

The educator is eternalized in each being he educates.

Teaching is not transferring knowledge, but creating possibilities for its own production or construction.

It is necessary to reduce the distance between what is said and what is done, until, at a given moment, your speech becomes your practice.

To educate is to impregnate with meaning what we do at every moment.

Humility expresses one of the rare certainties I am sure of: that no one is superior to anyone else.

The terrible consequences of negative thinking are realized too late.

Reading must be an act of love.

Reading the world precedes reading the word.

I move as an educator, because, first, I move as a person.

Dialogue creates a basis for collaboration.

Wherever there are women and men, there is always something to do, there is always something to teach, there is always something to learn.

It is not only important to study at school, but also to create bonds of friendship and coexistence.

There is no teaching without research and research without teaching.

The assumption of ourselves does not mean the exclusion of others.

Those who teach learn by teaching. And those who learn teach by learning.

One cannot speak of education without love.

There is no dialogue, however, if there is not a deep love for the world and for men.

Whoever begins to understand love, to explain it, to qualify and quantify it, is no longer in love.