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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

I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.
BILL AYERS

Hopeless Mother Suffering
I don’t think saying “I was wrong here, I was wrong there” absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.
BILL AYERS

Absolves Heaven Thinking
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.
BILL AYERS

Couse Determination Regret Unleashed
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 voted for Obama and I was delighted that he’s been elected.
BILL AYERS

Country Delighted Elected President
I do think [Barack Obama’s] strategy for re-election is so misguided. He’s counting on the Republicans to self-destruct, and they might, you know, but they might not. So he might be a one-term president.
BILL AYERS

President Self Thinking
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.
BILL AYERS

Children Country School
Terrorists destroy randomly.
BILL AYERS

Destroy Randomly Terrorist
In a wild and diverse democracy each of us should be trying to talk to lots and lots and lots of people outside of our own kind of comfort zone and community, and that injunction goes even further for political leaders.
BILL AYERS

Community Diverse People
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
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
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
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.
BILL AYERS

Assassinated Emerged Expand Living War
It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.
BILL AYERS

Black Movement
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
The way it happened was that we were advocating for a strike that we advocated that the faculty should strike in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.
BILL AYERS

Advocated Country Struggle Way
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.
BILL AYERS

Brother Stupid Two
Nixon probably was a nice guy.
BILL AYERS

Guy Nice Probably
When [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.
BILL AYERS

Dad Mom Social Views Voted Worker
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.”
BILL AYERS

Men Rights Running
Politicians are conservative by nature.
BILL AYERS

Conservative Nature Politician
I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.
BILL AYERS

Rights Support War
Students for a Democratic Society was founded in 1961.
BILL AYERS

Democratic Society Student Students
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
I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.
BILL AYERS

Children Fire Military Trillion World
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
Education is the motor-force of revolution.
BILL AYERS

Force Motor Revolution

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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