Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.

The future isn't something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.

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.

Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.

How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be 'hosts' of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information