We’re actually saying, here’s a principle that I’d like to arc toward. That’s a very different role in life. I didn’t expect [Barack] Obama to go to the root of things. I didn’t expect him to have a principled position on anything. I mean, just pay some moderate attention to the guy.
BILL AYERSWhen [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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Well, first of all I think that we have to be careful with terms like the working class, obviously. When [Karl] Marx wrote about the working class he was writing about something much more bounded than we’re talking about.
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Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.
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One hundred years from now, we’ll all be dead. It’s hard to believe. One hundred years from now, everyone we see every day will be gone.
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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.
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Every relationship is an experiment and what one learns from it is so fascinating.
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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.”
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To be a human being is to suffer. But it’s the unnecessary suffering, it’s the suffering that we visit upon one another, that really should be stopped.
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It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.
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We should open our eyes, see what’s in front of us, and act.
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I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.
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I would say for the young: Don’t be straight jacketed by ideology. Don’t be driven by a structure of ideas.
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There was a sense of palpable relief that George [W.] Bush was leaving and that the Republicans had slipped back and that was a wonderful feeling.
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Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.
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I was indicted on two federal conspiracies. My wife was on the Ten Most Wanted list. That’s what fascism was going to look like. That’s what it did look like.
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All of us pursued our own passions and our own interests. One of my brothers was filmmaker. One of my brothers was a teacher. My sister was a librarian.
BILL AYERS