The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.
Paulo FreireRead
Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reflecting on the past helps to build a better future.
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding our history and experiences as a way to gain clarity about our identity and choices. By learning from the past, individuals and societies can make informed and wise decisions that shape a more positive future.
Themes
PastFutureUnderstandingWisdomLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth and development.
More from Paulo Freire
All quotes βHow can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
Paulo FreireRead
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality.
Paulo FreireRead
This is the sense in which I am obliged to be a listener. To listen to the student's doubts, fears, and incompetencies that are part of the learning process. It is in listening to the student that I learn to speak with him or her.
Paulo FreireRead
This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade
Paulo FreireRead
The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.
Paulo FreireRead
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When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
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It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
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First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.
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Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.
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