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

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.

It's frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on.

One learns wisdom from sorrow, but pleasure is one of the fruits of wisdom.

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

I am what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker - a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten.

No one ever comes back from Vietnam. Not really.

Jane Austen is the feminine Peter Pan of letters. She never grew up.

So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls.

I've always been a pretty private, quiet kind of person and so I haven't had to change my life really at all, I don't think.

Everything, even the most ordinary daily affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art.

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.