black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.

Bill Ayers

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

Children Fire Military Trillion World
I mean, what’s he doing now? He’s evolving. Evolving? Well, evolve for Christ’s sake! And this is a guy – the whole gay community, and the whole environmental community and all these other people said, he’s our guy.
BILL AYERS

Christmas Community Evolving Jump People Sake
One of the things that’s complicated about writing anything is that it’s an act of narcissism, and then of course once it sails out into the world, you have to let go of it.
BILL AYERS

Go Letting World Writing
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
I wasn’t part of John Kennedy’s vision of the world, or Lyndon Johnson’s. I thought of them as anti-Communist imperial monsters.
BILL AYERS

Monsters Vision World
Imperialism or globalization – I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it.
BILL AYERS

Care Hate Imperialism
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
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 breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.
BILL AYERS

Air Book Confident Wall
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.”
BILL AYERS

Example Illinois Speech
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
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
The end of Students for a Democratic Society is viewed by me and a lot of other people as a terrible sorry in many ways, tragic event even though I participated in it and played some role in it. But I regret a lot of that.
BILL AYERS

People Regret Sorry
I don’t buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I’m an intergenerational person.
BILL AYERS

Mythology Persons Thinking
[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.
BILL AYERS

Awakening Firsts Years
What we need is a gigantic, messy community conversation about what is teaching and learning for the 21st century. We need to engage communities.
BILL AYERS

Community Needs Teaching

Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Organizing the working class in England or the U.S. or any other advanced capitalist country has been a daunting challenge.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bill Ayers Quotes