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Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

Bill Ayers

My father lived with me the last five years of his life and passed away of Alzheimer’s, and at that point he was saying to anyone who would listen,
BILL AYERS

Father Hate Listen War
So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that’s part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.
BILL AYERS

Childhood Kids Some Point Younger
If you pull in Europeans, Canadians, people from around the Third World, the war was vastly unpopular. But even half of Americans by 1968 opposed the war.
BILL AYERS

Country Opposed Third War World
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.
BILL AYERS

Class Michigan Sources Terrible
Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.
BILL AYERS

Murdered People War
Nixon probably was a nice guy.
BILL AYERS

Guy Nice Probably
It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.
BILL AYERS

Black Movement
“We all hated the war in Vietnam.” Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on.
BILL AYERS

Country Easy Hated People War
To 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.
BILL AYERS

Expanding Eye Knowing Universe
Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.
BILL AYERS

Excited Narcissism Writing
I don’t buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I’m an intergenerational person.
BILL AYERS

Mythology Persons Thinking
In a world as out of balance as this world, everyone can find something to do. And the question isn’t can you do everything; the question is, can you do anything?
BILL AYERS

Balance This World World
[Barack] Obama doesn’t disappoint me, because all during the campaign he said, I’m a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road, compromising politician.
BILL AYERS

Campaigns Compromise Politician
I’m different in the sense that every minute of every day, I change. I’m thinking. But the basic principles that have powered me forward are still there. They’re not different.
BILL AYERS

Different Principles Thinking
I don’t think saying “I was wrong here, I was wrong there” absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.
BILL AYERS

Absolves Heaven Thinking
One of the things that happened that I think is noteworthy, my parents were pretty tolerant people given their position in society.
BILL AYERS

Agency Children Thinking

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

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Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

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