It is truly difficult to make a democracy. Democracy, like arty dream, is not made with spiritual words but with reflection and practice. It is not what I say that says I am a democrat, that I am not racist or machista but what I do. What I say must not be contradicted by what I do. It is what I do that bespeaks my faithfulness or not to what I say.

How can I be an educator if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student, which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching and to the education process itself.

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.

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.

The world is split between those who do not sleep because they are hungry and those who do not sleep because they are afraid of those who are hungry.

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.