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.
BILL AYERSBeing an activist and an artist – those two things should go together. You should allow the artistic sensibility to control some of your activism, but never should it be allowed to paralyze you.
More Bill Ayers Quotes
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What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics.
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Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.
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[Students for a Democratic Society] was on many campuses and it was a powerful organization. It was founded by Tom Hayden, who passed away very recently.
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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.
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Terrorists destroy randomly.
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My father lived with me the last five years of his life and passed away of Alzheimer’s, and at that point he was saying to anyone who would listen,
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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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It’s worth remembering that in 1965, something like 20% of Americans were against the war. Something like 70% were for the war. So, it wasn’t a popular or an easy thing to do.
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Nixon probably was a nice guy.
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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.
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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].
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Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.
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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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Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.
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Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.
BILL AYERS