Paulo Freire

shall start by reaffirming that humankind, as beings of the praxis, differ from animals, which are beings of pure activity.

human beings emerge from the world, objectify it, and in so doing can understand it and transform it with their labor.

Human activity is theory and practice; it is reflection and action. It cannot, as I stressed in chapter 2, be reduced to either verbalism or activism.

Lenin’s famous statement: “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”1 means that a revolution is
achieved
with neither verbalism nor activism, but rather with praxis, that is, with reflection and

with neither verbalism nor activism, but rather with praxis, that is, with reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed. The revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as mere doers.

Revolutionary praxis is a unity, and the leaders cannot treat the oppressed as their possession.

is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as Subjects of the transformation.

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as Subjects of the transformation

If they are drawn into the process as ambiguous beings, partly themselves and partly

the oppressors housed within them—and if they come to power still embodying that ambiguity imposed on them by the situation of oppression—it is my contention that they will merely imagine they have reached power.