Bill Hynes

“How can I enter into dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own?...How can I enter into dialogue if I am closed to - and even offended by - the contribution of others? At the point of encounter there are neither yet ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only people who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. This distortion occurs within history; but it is not an historical vocation. Indeed, to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair. The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because 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.

Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.

This, then, is the greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not live the world - if I do not love life - if I do not love people - I cannot enter into dialogue.”
― Paulo Freire