In a wild and diverse democracy each of us should be trying to talk to lots and lots and lots of people outside of our own kind of comfort zone and community, and that injunction goes even further for political leaders.
BILL AYERS[Barack] Obama doesn’t disappoint me, because all during the campaign he said, I’m a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road, compromising politician.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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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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Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President – that was exhilarating.
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We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can’t the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It’s a captured system.
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I always say your body is the temple of your spirit, why not decorate it? My kids say, no, no, your body is the temple of your spirit, keep it clean. I’m covered in tattoos and I get a tattoo every time I write a book. I get the tattoo from the book.
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Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, once asked, “How shall we respond to the dreams of youth?” It is a dazzling and elegant question, a question that demands an answer–a range of answers, really, spiraling outward in widening circles.
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I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.
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I get up every morning and think…today I’m going to end capitalism.
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Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.
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The day before every revolution that’s ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.
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His [Martin Luther King] last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, is a direct reference to angles, barbarism or socialism.
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That’s in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn’t work, but it’s very hard to predict what will work.
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Everyone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.
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I was terrible student at Michigan, terrible. Because there was too much else to do. I was learning form too many other sources to go to class.
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I’m not disappointed in [Barack] Obama. He said who he is; he’s doing what he said he would do.
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[Barack Obama] was running for Senate and he’s saying, I’m not for gay marriage because I’m a Christian. Jump off a bridge! I mean what the hell are you talking about? You know,
BILL AYERS