Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood

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

Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.

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

Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause--the cause of liberation.

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.

Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.

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

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

If you are frustrated with the elite of your society, do something about it.

They hate us because we are atheists and we feel sorry for them because they are religious.

Christianity is a battle not a dream

I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.

How do I stay humble? Because I'm the best at being humble.

If you want something, give it

Where there is no struggle, there is absolutely no progress

We always plan too much and always think too little.

This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.

Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes.