Quotes About Empowerment

The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves...

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).

To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.

Que tudo se foda, disse ela, e se fodeu toda.

If you think you are only strong if you can lift a certain number, whatever that number is, you will feel pretty weak most of the time. Strength is not a data point; it's not a number. It's an attitude.

See what I mean? You fell off. You're such a damsel in distress.

I don't want to fight for anything. I want to just be and do, with no one saying they're letting me.

no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.

You can't save a person who doesn't want to be saved. It was like Mr. Eddie always told the new gardeners: Everybody's got to kill their own snakes.

It is my belief that conscious African American students ought to be in a constant state of rage and in a constant search for ways to channel that rage into freedom struggle.

freedom can be a full-time job if you let it.

It is so important to be conscious even when it makes you realize how much negative stuff you have enjoyed all your life until you realized it was all anti you.

I know I was born and I know that I'll die The in between is mine I am mine... There's no need to hide We're safe tonight

We who teach are not meant to search for faults but for possibilities.

Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell." ( America's Medieval Women , Harper's Magazine, August 1938)

Major offenses like this one, as well as minor indignities, or what psychologist Chester Pierce (1995) referred to as micro-aggressions, are so common and pervasive that for many parents, preparing their Black sons for the likelihood of an

Woman, the sweetest name That man can breathe, or flattering language frame, Who art thou?

now that I had finally confronted him, he had lost his power over me.

Kelli Farrell talks about the difference between girls and boys who struggle to get through high school: "Girls, especially those whose moms are head of household, get the message that men come and go, that they're going to have to take care of themselves and their kids. They're ready for the opportunity to step up. By the last year or two in high school, many boys have already steeled themselves for failure. They've checked out intellectually, mentally, and emotionally.

Some of us just go along . . . until that marvelous day people stop intimidating us -- or should I say we refuse to let them intimidate us

The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.

There is only one princess in the Disney tales, one girl who gets to be exalted. Princesses may confide in a sympathetic mouse or teacup, but they do not have girlfriends. God forbid Snow White should give Sleeping Beauty a little support. Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of the rest of their lives.