The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
BILL AYERSI knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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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.
BILL AYERS -
I don’t buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I’m an intergenerational person.
BILL AYERS -
Politicians are conservative by nature.
BILL AYERS -
After I had known [Barack Obama] for a while, I remember saying to my partner, “You know, this guy is really ambitious, I think he wants to be Mayor of Chicago.” That was the limit of my imagination.
BILL AYERS -
It was the Democratic Party, it was the Presidential election. We elected a president [Barack Obama]; we didn’t elect a king. So all the speculation in the next three months.
BILL AYERS -
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.
BILL AYERS -
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.
BILL AYERS -
That’s what [Abraham] Lincoln said. “The white man will always be above the black man. I don’t want them to run for office, or have political rights, or vote. I want them to go back to Africa.”
BILL AYERS -
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 -
[Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had to do as a conservative politician.
BILL AYERS -
But the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions of hip.
BILL AYERS -
If you listen to the debate, [Barack Obama] and [John] McCain said the same thing about gay rights.
BILL AYERS -
Every revolution seems impossible at the beginning, and after it happens, it was inevitable.
BILL AYERS -
I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.
BILL AYERS -
In some ways a mark of good parenting is that you don’t try to make your children into little knockoffs of yourself. None of us went into business. None of us became powerful people like that.
BILL AYERS






