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I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.

Bill Ayers

Now you may like the images of long-haired hippies running in the streets throwing tear gas canisters, but we didn’t end the war. And that’s what we set out to do. What was not ended by the anti-war movement was ended by the Vietnamese. That’s our shame.
BILL AYERS

Hippie Running War
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

Parks Revolution Thinking
The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.
BILL AYERS

Goes Ideas Teaching
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
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
This 1965. We went to trial on our city. We were obviously borrowing tactics and strategy from the Black freedom movement, and we were echoing their approach to things.
BILL AYERS

Black Cities Trials
The president of the University said that night, congratulations to you the students, you’ve won a great victory, now the war will end. And I’m certain that he believed it that night and I believed it and we went away happy. Four days later, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
BILL AYERS

Assisted Congratulations Kings War
[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.
BILL AYERS

Gay Rights Winking
I find some unity with Ron Paul.
BILL AYERS

Find Some Unity
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.
BILL AYERS

Government Party People
There were no political ideas. It was an apolitical time. It was the ’50s and in the privilege of the suburbs.
BILL AYERS

Ideas Political Privilege
I haven’t been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I’m not silent.
BILL AYERS

Lectures Silent Writing
It’s the height of the Cold War, but I grew up in apolitical family and politics wasn’t on the agenda.
BILL AYERS

Agendas Height War
The truth is that the antiwar movement was powered by the working class. The students were the ones that got the media and so forth, but it was the soldiers on the ground who really energized the antiwar movement in the late Sixties.
BILL AYERS

Class Media Soldier
In terms of my own behavior and activity, the funny thing about regrets and saying “I’m sorry,” is that there’s so much I would do differently and want to do differently moving forward.
BILL AYERS

Moving Regret Sorry
[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.
BILL AYERS

Awakening Firsts Years

I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.

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I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.

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