Paulo Freire — Quote from Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.”
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
Concepts: praxis, agency, meaning
Resonant Quotes
- “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil...” — Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth Both quotes capture the ongoing, generational nature of liberation as an active process where each era must criticall...
- “The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal...” — Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition Both ground human renewal in our capacity to begin anew, where Freire's continuous re-naming exemplifies Arendt's nat...
- “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until...” — James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption Both articulate the dialectical relationship between consciousness and transformation, where naming/facing reality be...
- “Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the inter...” — Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition Freire's praxis of naming-the-world and Arendt's action-in-plurality both insist that meaning emerges only through en...
- “To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality...” — bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody hooks's call to root imagination in concrete reality while reaching beyond it is a direct extension of Freire's praxi...
- “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until...” — James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption Baldwin's insistence on facing truth before change and Freire's naming the world to transform it both place conscious...
- “O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Both quotes unite critical consciousness with transformative action, where Freire's cyclical naming-questioning proce...
- “The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expec...” — Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition Both locate human essence in the capacity for transformative action, where Freire's naming process exemplifies Arendt...