We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can’t the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It’s a captured system.
When you go into a college of education you’ve got aspirations of making a difference in people’s lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education.
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.
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.
One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I remember one moment when we heard two students saying don’t talk to those guys, meaning my brother and me.
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.
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.
People camped out at his house, and wondering who’s coming to visit, who’s going to be the Secretary of State – that all struck me as inane and stupid.
In Cairo, these young men hanging around in the street, we’re told these guys are lazy, they’re uneducated, they don’t care, they don’t have any political instincts – just like the working class in America, apparently – and then suddenly what the hell happened?
The US is indeed a terrorist nation. …It’s also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today.
It wasn’t [Barack] Obama per se; it was the feeling on the ground; it was seeing an old black woman in a wheelchair being wheeled by her son waving a big American flag, and then seeing a guy with his baby in his arms saying,
[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.
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.
I get up every morning and think, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I’m back to work tomorrow, and that’s the only way you can do it.
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.
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.
If you read Martin Luther King speeches and sermons in the last two years of his life – you might want to – when I read these to my students, they think it’s Malcom X because it’s so radical.
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a-great-tim.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/grey-the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/blue-the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/red-the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/brown-the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/white-the-whole-first-year-at-university-was-a.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - I’m not disappointed in [Barack] Obama. He said who he is; he’s doing what he said he would do.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/im-not-disappointed-in-barack-obama-he-said-who-he.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - It wasn’t [Barack] Obama per se; it was the feeling on the ground; it was seeing an old black woman in a wheelchair being wheeled by her son waving a big American flag, and then seeing a guy with his baby in his arms saying,](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/it-wasnt-barack-obama-per-se-it-was-the-feeling-on.jpg)
![Bill Ayers Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/john-mccain-seemed-to-be-winking-to-the-right-and-.jpg)
