AtomicQuote

Paolo Freire Quote

The oppressor is solidary wit the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor -- when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.

Paolo Freire

The oppressor is solidary wit the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor -- when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.

Tags: marxism, oppression, power, social justice

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About Paolo Freire

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose work revolutionized global thought on education. He is best known for Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he reimagines teaching as a collaborative act of liberation rather than transmission. A founder of critical pedagogy, Freire’s influence spans literacy movements, liberation theology, postcolonial education, and contemporary theories of social justice and learning. He is widely regarded as one of the most important educational theorists of the twentieth century, alongside figures such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori, and considered "the Grandfather of Critical Theory."