Learning is a process where knowledge is presented to us, then shaped through understanding, discussion and reflection.

When we live our lives with the authenticity demanded by the practice of teaching that is also learning and learning that is also teaching, we are participating in a total experience.... In this experience the beautiful, the decent, and the serious form a circle with hands joined.

The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.

Reading is not walking on the words; it's grasping the soul of them.

The educator has the duty of not being neutral.

It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.

I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.