Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people – they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.
If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.
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.
For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge men’s consciousness.