I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.
BILL AYERSTo me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much as you can, knowing that whatever you see is going to be partial. That you possess a partial consciousness in an infinite and expanding universe.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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If you listen to the debate, [Barack Obama] and [John] McCain said the same thing about gay rights.
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It’s amazing where the paranoid mind can take you.
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I do think [Barack Obama’s] strategy for re-election is so misguided. He’s counting on the Republicans to self-destruct, and they might, you know, but they might not. So he might be a one-term president.
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Imperialism or globalization – I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it.
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I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.
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The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.
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If the logic of capitalism is “expand or die,” then either it has to die or the world has to die.
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I don’t regret setting bombs.
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There are things about classic liberalism that obviously I’m drawn to and I bet all of you are as well. Those are things like liberty, freedom, the Bill of Rights. But the reason that I reject the label is that I grew up cutting my teeth against the liberals.
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When you go into a college of education you’ve got aspirations of making a difference in people’s lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education.
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I’m wary of government. Part of [the Tea Party] impulse is to dislike and be worried about the rich. I’m that way too. So I don’t find them to be as atrocious as most people do, as your liberals do. I’m not a liberal.
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I’d been arrested many times by then. I’d been an organizer, so many things had changed over those three years [from 1965 till 1968].
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I lasted a year and a half at Michigan before I dropped out and joined the merchant marines and I was a merchant marine for my sophomore year then I came back to Michigan.
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[John] McCain seemed to be winking to the Right, and [Barack] Obama seemed to be winking to the Left. Neither one of them – if McCain had been elected we’d still be where we are on gay rights.
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Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.
BILL AYERS