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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].

Bill Ayers

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
Education is the motor-force of revolution.
BILL AYERS

Force Motor Revolution
The day before every revolution that’s ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.
BILL AYERS

Before Day Knows Nobody Revolution
The idea that teaching is somehow the delivery of the goods is such a misunderstanding of what actually goes on.
BILL AYERS

Goes Ideas Teaching
I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base – those people should be allowed to vote in the American election.
BILL AYERS

Country Law Military
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.
BILL AYERS

Jobs People Sex
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

Insane People Stupid Wondering
They were pretty interesting about being interesting able to look at their children and think oh my children know things and they gave us a lot of sense of our own agency, and that may be a kind of a ruling class trait.
BILL AYERS

Children Country Kind May Ruling Sense
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
There are things about classic liberalism that obviously I’m drawn to and I bet all of you are as well. Those are things like liberty, freedom, the Bill of Rights. But the reason that I reject the label is that I grew up cutting my teeth against the liberals.
BILL AYERS

Cutting Liberty Rights
Agitators, organizers, activists, intellectuals aren’t bound by those rules. We’re not trying to figure out, how do I thread this particular needle?
BILL AYERS

Figures Thread Trying
After I had known [Barack Obama] for a while, I remember saying to my partner, “You know, this guy is really ambitious, I think he wants to be Mayor of Chicago.” That was the limit of my imagination.
BILL AYERS

Guy Imagination Thinking
Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President – that was exhilarating.
BILL AYERS

Country Exhilarating Long
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
If you read Martin Luther King speeches and sermons in the last two years of his life – you might want to – when I read these to my students, they think it’s Malcom X because it’s so radical.
BILL AYERS

Country King Thinking
[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
I’m wary of government. Part of [the Tea Party] impulse is to dislike and be worried about the rich. I’m that way too. So I don’t find them to be as atrocious as most people do, as your liberals do. I’m not a liberal.
BILL AYERS

Government Party People
Everyone 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.
BILL AYERS

Ambitious Guy Lovely
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.
BILL AYERS

Talking Thinking Writing
Injustice anywhere is an assault on all of us. That means that we all can get busy.
BILL AYERS

Busy Injustice Mean
[Barack Obama] was running for Senate and he’s saying, I’m not for gay marriage because I’m a Christian. Jump off a bridge! I mean what the hell are you talking about? You know,
BILL AYERS

Christian Mean Running
Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.
BILL AYERS

Bird Century Country
I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.
BILL AYERS

Children Fire Military Trillion World
I don’t buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I’m an intergenerational person.
BILL AYERS

Mythology Persons Thinking
When someone who’s always been in your life is gone, it’s a stunning adjustment of your own identity.
BILL AYERS

Adjustment Gone Identity Life
We should open our eyes, see what’s in front of us, and act.
BILL AYERS

Eye Fronts Should
Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.
BILL AYERS

Driven Parent Tolerant

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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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].

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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