Bill Ayers

I'm not disappointed in [Barack] Obama. He said who he is; he's doing what he said he would do.

— Bill Ayers

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the…

— Bill Ayers

I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.

— Bill Ayers

But the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions…

— Bill Ayers

I haven't been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I'm not silent.

— Bill Ayers

[Students for a Democratic Society] it's a social democratic program.

— Bill Ayers

It's the height of the Cold War, but I grew up in apolitical family and politics wasn't on the agenda.

— Bill Ayers

I went underground. So I didn't see [my father] for 11 years. So that was pretty traumatic time for my parents for sure.

— Bill Ayers

After I had known [Barack Obama] for a while, I remember saying to my partner, "You know, this guy is really ambitious,…

— Bill Ayers

I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head.…

— Bill Ayers

That's where we all kind of were in the mid-1960s. Students for a Democratic Society grew from a small group of socialists…

— Bill Ayers

Lyndon Johnson who was the president who was executing that war, announced in the spring of 1968 that he would not seek…

— Bill Ayers

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We…

— Bill Ayers

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…

— Bill Ayers

To me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much…

— Bill Ayers

[Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had…

— Bill Ayers

In some ways a mark of good parenting is that you don't try to make your children into little knockoffs of yourself.…

— Bill Ayers

When you go into a college of education you've got aspirations of making a difference in people's lives, of loving children, of…

— Bill Ayers

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

The fact is that in my prep school, I went to a boarding school, 39 young men graduated from that prep school.…

— Bill Ayers

One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I…

— Bill Ayers

The idea that you live your life in phases - I've never bought that. I feel like I'm the same person who…

— Bill Ayers

It transmitted because on the campuses, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was recruiting, was organizing. Students for a Democratic Society was founded at…

— Bill Ayers

Fairly apolitical. Kind of aspiring to participate in life. I'm 18-19 years old. Wanting to dive into the world and finding the…

— Bill Ayers

I suffer from a genetic flaw, which is that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.

— Bill Ayers

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement..

— Bill Ayers

Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war.

— Bill Ayers

Nothing is more boring than some old person going on and on about the way things used to be.

— Bill Ayers

I dropped out in '64. And I came back to Michigan, in '65. In 1965, when I came back I had never…

— Bill Ayers

You can be disappointed but only if you thought [Barack Obama] was something that he said he wasn't!

— 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…

— Bill Ayers

Students for a Democratic Society was also affiliated with the civil rights movement everywhere.

— Bill Ayers

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

— Bill Ayers

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.

— Bill Ayers

I didn't respond to people thrusting microphones at me and asking me questions that were unanswerable in a sound bite.

— Bill Ayers

[Martin Luther King] King was a socialist and King was an activist who was really a radical by the end.

— Bill Ayers

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…

— Bill Ayers

The passions and commitments that ignited my activity as a student are the same passions and commitments that I have today.

— Bill Ayers

Every relationship is an experiment and what one learns from it is so fascinating.

— Bill Ayers

If the logic of capitalism is "expand or die," then either it has to die or the world has to die.

— Bill Ayers