25 Paulo Freire Quotes from the Great Educator

By Stephanie Kirby | Published August 28, 2023

He helped open people’s minds to a new way of learning as you’ll see in these Paulo Freire quotes.

Paulo Freire grew up in a poor community where the difficulties and challenges of poverty and hunger were real.

His poor living situation impacted the way that he was able to perform and learn in school.

This gave him great insight into some ideas that would change the way many people viewed education.

Not only was he a teacher, but he married a teacher, and several of their children became teachers.

He believed that students could either passively take in the information they were being told or that there was a better way of learning that allowed students to combine learning with the world around them.

This transformed the education system and experience for many.

Enjoy these Paulo Freire quotes!

Don’t forget to also check out these education quotes about the power of learning.

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement.

Read more related content on our inspirational quotes category page.

You will also enjoy our article on quotes about education.

Paulo Freire quotes about education

1. “Education is freedom.” ― Paulo Freire

2. “Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage.” ― Paulo Freire

3. “Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of them.” ― Paulo Freire

You will also enjoy our article on Teacher’s Day quotes.

4. “To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-create them.” ― Paulo Freire

5. “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.” ― Paulo Freire

6. “Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion, and reflection.” ― Paulo Freire

7. “Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” ― Paulo Freire

8. “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.” ― Paulo Freire

9. “One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.” ― Paulo Freire

10. “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.” ― Paulo Freire

11. “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” ― Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire quotes about teaching

12. “To teach is part of the very fabric of learning.” ― Paulo Freire

13. “The educator has the duty of not being neutral.” ― Paulo Freire

14. “I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.” ― Paulo Freire

15. “Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.” ― Paulo Freire

16. “Teacher preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history.” ― Paulo Freire

17. “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.” ― Paulo Freire

18. “The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” ― Paulo Freire

19. “Although the teachers or the students are not the same, the person in charge of education is being formed or re-formed as he/she teaches, and the person who is being taught forms him/herself in the process. …There is, in fact, no teaching without learning.” ― Paulo Freire

20. “Educators need to know what happens in the world of the children with whom they work. They need to know the universe of their dreams, the language with which they skillfully defend themselves from the aggressiveness of their world, what they know independently of the school, and how they know it.” ― Paulo Freire

21. “Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.” ― Paulo Freire

22. “This is the road I have tried to follow as a teacher: living my convictions; being open to the process of knowing and being sensitive to the experience of teaching as an art; being pushed forward by the challenges that prevent me from bureaucratizing my practice; accepting my limitations, yet always conscious of the necessary effort to overcome them and aware that I cannot hide them because to do so would be a failure to respect both my students and myself as a teacher.” ― Paulo Freire

Inspirational Paulo Freire quotes

23. “To speak a true word is to transform the world.” ― Paulo Freire

24. “Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.” ― Paulo Freire

25. “No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.” ― Paulo Freire

What did you learn from these Paulo Freire quotes?

There are a lot of ways that the world around us impacts our lives, including in the way that we learn.

Instead of simply sitting and taking the information we are being fed, Paulo Freire believed in the importance of critical thinking and the problem-posing approach.

He believed that it was beneficial not just for the students but for the teachers as well.

Paulo Freire believed that people already had a base level of understanding from their life experiences and that this needed to play a role in their education and development.

If you’re interested in learning more about Paulo Freire and his ideas and theories, he wrote several books that you can dive into.