It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn’t make mockery of my values. That’s what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.
BILL AYERSI 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.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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When I was young, communism, which had a certain allure to me, was clearly a failed experiment in the Soviet Union and in China. And yet, anti-communism was as bad.
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I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.
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What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.
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Two months after that, Kennedy was assassinated. Two months after that, Henry Kissinger emerged from the swamp he was living in at Harvard with a plan to expand the war.
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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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Being arrested that also changed everything for me because I was suddenly seeing America from a different perspective all together. I did a couple of weeks in a county jail.
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Agitators, organizers, activists, intellectuals aren’t bound by those rules. We’re not trying to figure out, how do I thread this particular needle?
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Education is a right, it’s a journey, it’s a process, and it’s something we have to stand for, as hard as it is.
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Being an activist and an artist – those two things should go together. You should allow the artistic sensibility to control some of your activism, but never should it be allowed to paralyze you.
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It’s worth remembering that in 1965, something like 20% of Americans were against the war. Something like 70% were for the war. So, it wasn’t a popular or an easy thing to do.
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Students for a Democratic Society was founded in 1961.
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I taught. I lectured at universities. I spoke to my students. I spoke in certain public forums. But what I didn’t do was respond to microphones being thrust in my face and saying, what is your relationship with Obama and are you an unrepentant terrorist?
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The great example, the killer example in history, is of course Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator. Read his speeches. Read the debates. Wendell Phillips called him “the great slaver from Illinois.”
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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.
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Where’s the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows.
BILL AYERS