black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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.

Bill Ayers

Hating war in Vietnam in 1965 was minority position.
BILL AYERS

Hate Minorities War
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?
BILL AYERS

Class Happened Men Political Rights Street
Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.
BILL AYERS

Broken Numbers People
I dropped out in ’64. And I came back to Michigan, in ’65. In 1965, when I came back I had never heard of Vietnam.
BILL AYERS

Country Dropped Heard 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
So we were ecstatic and we swirled around spontaneously, the campus in Ann Harbor and about 4,000 of us landed on the steps of the president of the University of Michigan’s home.
BILL AYERS

Home President
Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.
BILL AYERS

Driven Parent Tolerant
Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.
BILL AYERS

Frankly Ground Politician Propulsive
[Martin Luther King] King was a socialist and King was an activist who was really a radical by the end.
BILL AYERS

Ends Kings Luther
The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.
BILL AYERS

Dollar Military Spend Two Years
So that’s kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would’ve said, “I don’t have any politics. I’m a business person.” Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.
BILL AYERS

Country Eisenhower Moderate Republican
I’d been arrested many times by then. I’d been an organizer, so many things had changed over those three years [from 1965 till 1968].
BILL AYERS

Changed Three Years
I don’t buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I’m an intergenerational person.
BILL AYERS

Mythology Persons Thinking
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.
BILL AYERS

Should Suffering Unnecessary
“We all hated the war in Vietnam.” Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on.
BILL AYERS

Country Easy Hated People War
I find some unity with Ron Paul.
BILL AYERS

Find Some Unity

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Ayers Quotes