It wasn't [Barack] Obama per se; it was the feeling on the ground; it was seeing an old black woman in a… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you're not willing to open your eyes and see… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
When I was arrested opposing the war in Vietnam in 1965, as I said about 20 or 30% of people were opposed… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
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… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
I think that you're smarter than we were, but we had two things: one is, in our naïveté we believed we could… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
All that means to me is that people who have a vision of a better world have a responsibility to open their… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
If the logic of capitalism is "expand or die," then either it has to die or the world has to die. — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
In a world as out of balance as this world, everyone can find something to do. And the question isn't can you… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
The US is indeed a terrorist nation. ...It's also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
We all want to believe this American pastoral, but there's more to it. We have to be willing to exile ourselves from… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
One of the things that's complicated about writing anything is that it's an act of narcissism, and then of course once it… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
Can we imagine a different world? I can. That's a world where work is rational, it's in the common good, and we're… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
Living in a bubble as I said in a featherbed of privilege. That's why leaving home, leaving the prep school and going… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
I was from my little perch in a prep school I saw the civil rights movement and it was defining the moral… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
To me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much… — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I didn't respond to people thrusting microphones at me and asking me questions that were unanswerable in a sound bite. — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
I haven't been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I'm not silent. — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
[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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening. — Bill Ayers Copy Share Image