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It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn’t make mockery of my values. That’s what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.

Bill Ayers

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
When I was young, communism, which had a certain allure to me, was clearly a failed experiment in the Soviet Union and in China. And yet, anti-communism was as bad.
BILL AYERS

Allure Communism Unions
I think I am a radical. I have never deviated from that. By radical, I mean someone trying to go to the root of things.
BILL AYERS

Mean Roots Thinking
The president of the University said that night, congratulations to you the students, you’ve won a great victory, now the war will end. And I’m certain that he believed it that night and I believed it and we went away happy. Four days later, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
BILL AYERS

Assisted Congratulations Kings War
[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.
BILL AYERS

Awakening Firsts Years
Even there, [Barack] Obama’s generals, his Pentagon, they’re telling him what to do. And the force for gay rights is inevitable. And you can say Obama will help us, and maybe he will, but only if we have something on the ground that will make him help us.
BILL AYERS

Country Gay Movement President Rights
I don’t regret setting bombs.
BILL AYERS

Bombs Regret Settings
Part of the fun of writing, touring, teaching, is engaging with real people about all of it: what to do now, how to build a movement, of approaches to teaching, of parenting – it’s exciting to be in that dialogue.
BILL AYERS

Fun Real Teaching
I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.
BILL AYERS

Absolutely Barack Country Wells
To me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much as you can, knowing that whatever you see is going to be partial. That you possess a partial consciousness in an infinite and expanding universe.
BILL AYERS

Expanding Eye Knowing Universe
It’s the connection between schools and communities that creates greatness in schools.
BILL AYERS

Community Greatness School
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.
BILL AYERS

Car Home People
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
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
His [Martin Luther King] last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, is a direct reference to angles, barbarism or socialism.
BILL AYERS

Book Community Kings
The truth is that the antiwar movement was powered by the working class. The students were the ones that got the media and so forth, but it was the soldiers on the ground who really energized the antiwar movement in the late Sixties.
BILL AYERS

Class Media Soldier
It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn’t make mockery of my values. That’s what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.
BILL AYERS

Life Living Mockery.Way
Education is a right, it’s a journey, it’s a process, and it’s something we have to stand for, as hard as it is.
BILL AYERS

Hard Journey Process
In a world as out of balance as this world, everyone can find something to do. And the question isn’t can you do everything; the question is, can you do anything?
BILL AYERS

Balance This World World
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
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
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
I’m writing this book right now called Pallin’ Around, and the subtitle is: “Talking to the Tea Party.” And frankly I find talking to the Tea Party exhilarating, I love it.
BILL AYERS

Exhilarating Frankly Love Talking Writing
If the logic of capitalism is “expand or die,” then either it has to die or the world has to die.
BILL AYERS

Capitalism Logic World
The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.
BILL AYERS

Finals Path War
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
So that’s kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would’ve said, “I don’t have any politics. I’m a business person.” Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.
BILL AYERS

Country Eisenhower Moderate Republican

It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn’t make mockery of my values. That’s what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.

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It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn’t make mockery of my values. That’s what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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