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If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

Bill Ayers

I lasted a year and a half at Michigan before I dropped out and joined the merchant marines and I was a merchant marine for my sophomore year then I came back to Michigan.
BILL AYERS

Drop Lasted Marine Merchant Year
“I didn’t want her to miss tonight! I wanted to be able to tell her!” And to see all these people, a Hispanic cop dancing with an old white woman, wow! I mean, that’s the world I want to live in, and because it’s the world I want to live in, I had a hard time leaving.
BILL AYERS

Dancing Hispanic People Tonight Wanted Woman World
It was Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips – these were the people who made abolition real. Now, none of you guys is in favor of slavery, right?
BILL AYERS

Guy People Real
Politicians are conservative by nature.
BILL AYERS

Conservative Nature Politician
Your body’s always going through changes. It’s fattening or thinning or wrinkling or blotching, and the only thing you really have control over is putting some decoration on it.
BILL AYERS

Body Changes Fattening Going Through
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
Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don’t have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.
BILL AYERS

Activism Art Contradictory
Lyndon Johnson who was the president who was executing that war, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek the presidency again. He would go to Paris and end the war in Vietnam. Well we were ecstatic.
BILL AYERS

Country President Spring War
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.
BILL AYERS

Easy Remember War
I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.
BILL AYERS

Children Fire Military Trillion World
I don’t regret setting bombs.
BILL AYERS

Bombs Regret Settings
I would say when I went to Michigan. It started. I got very very involved in civil rights in Ann Harbor right away. Picketing, something I never even knew existed.
BILL AYERS

Harbors Michigan Rights
Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.
BILL AYERS

Excited Narcissism Writing
There are things about classic liberalism that obviously I’m drawn to and I bet all of you are as well. Those are things like liberty, freedom, the Bill of Rights. But the reason that I reject the label is that I grew up cutting my teeth against the liberals.
BILL AYERS

Cutting Liberty Rights
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

Boys Fool Mind
The massive anti-war movement, which I was a part of and which was a major part of my life, never stopped the war in Vietnam.
BILL AYERS

Movement Vietnam War

If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

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If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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