Being tolerant does not mean acquiescing to the intolerable; it does not mean covering up disrespect; it does not mean coddling the aggressor or disguising aggression. Tolerance is the virtue that teaches us to live with the different. It teaches us to learn from and respect the different.
I hope at least that the following will endure: my trust in the people, and my faith in men and women, and in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love.
A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education.
People in communion liberate each other.
Education is suffering from narration sickness.
The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.
The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy.
Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply “blah, blah, blah, ” and practice, pure activism.
The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.
Submission to suffering is a form of annihilation, but transformation of suffering rekindles a faith that gives life.
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.
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.
Any attempt to treat people as semihumans only dehumanizes them...
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, according to its particular structure, shapes education in relation to the ends and interests of those who control the power in that society.
Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.
Education is freedom.
In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.
Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood.
Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.