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The best student in physics or mathematics, at school or university, is not one who memorizes formulae but one who is aware of the reason for them. For students, the more simply and docilely they receive the contents with which their teachers "fill" them in the name of knowledge, the less they are able to think and the more they become merely repetitive. The best philosophy student is not one who discourses, "ipsis verbis," on the philosophy of Plato, Marx, or Kant but one who thinks critically about their ideas and takes the risk of thinking too.

— Paulo Freire Extension or Communication (1974)

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Knowledge

More quotes by Paulo Freire

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

The Politics of Education (1985)

True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, and in its existentiality, in its praxis.

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968)

Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders—in their communion, in their praxis—can this theory be built.

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968)

The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968)

It is accomplished by the oppressors depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo.

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

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Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paulo Freire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.