Optimist Quotes by Bill Ayers

It wasn't [Barack] Obama per se; it was the feeling on the ground; it was seeing an old black woman in a wheelchair being…

— 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

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

— Bill Ayers

One of the great crimes of the Bloomberg/Klein administration [in New York City] is that they've removed themselves from communities, as if communities have…

— Bill Ayers

I was involved in the anti-war movement.

— Bill Ayers

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

— Bill Ayers

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…

— Bill Ayers

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

You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you're not willing to open your eyes and see the world…

— 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…

— Bill Ayers

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

— Bill Ayers

[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.

— Bill Ayers