It’s the height of the Cold War, but I grew up in apolitical family and politics wasn’t on the agenda.
BILL AYERSEveryone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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I came back to Ann Harbor, got caught up with people who were much more sophisticated than I, and it was an exciting time because my eyes were opening and that’s always exciting and Michigan is the place where we had the first teach-in against the war.
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Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.
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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.
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One of the things that happened that I think is noteworthy, my parents were pretty tolerant people given their position in society.
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That’s in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn’t work, but it’s very hard to predict what will work.
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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.
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So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that’s part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.
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The great example, the killer example in history, is of course Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator. Read his speeches. Read the debates. Wendell Phillips called him “the great slaver from Illinois.”
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Beginning to dismantle the Pentagon would save $1 trillion a year – a small government proposal if ever there was one.
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I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.
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We have sex education – I’m for it, I’m not against it. But any curriculum should recognize that it’s young people’s job to invent it themselves. You’re not going to teach them; they’re going to reinvent it.
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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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When someone who’s always been in your life is gone, it’s a stunning adjustment of your own identity.
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What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics.
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I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.
BILL AYERS