It's no sin to make a critical study of Brazil's reality. A small percentage own land. Most people don't.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate 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.

The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves.

The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.

Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

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

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.