Latest Bill Ayers Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I think that you're smarter than we were, but we had two things: one is, in our naïveté we believed we could change the world. And number two, we believed that another world was possible. And once that belief took hold of some critical mass, a tiny minority nonetheless, but a critical mass of people, then the world did change.

  Bill Ayers

  Thinking, Two, Numbers

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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? What was that? They changed the world by changing themselves. Now is that over? No. Is the civil rights movement over? No. These movements have not accomplished what they set out to accomplish.

  Bill Ayers

  Men, Rights, Class

  Source: thepointmag.com

• I don't know why there's not more activism today. I do think that your generation is twenty times smarter than our generation ever was, but the problem with being smart like you guys is that it can lead you really easily to being cynical, and cynicism is actually a pacifying attitude.

  Bill Ayers

  Attitude, Smart, Thinking

  Source: thepointmag.com

• There was always resistance and there was always a counter-narrative, but we were told all through the early twentieth century that black people in the South don't want an education, they don't want to vote, they're simple people, they don't want this, they don't want that.

  Bill Ayers

  Simple, People, Black

  Source: thepointmag.com

• Let's look at two things real quickly: the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the Sixties and the Arab Spring starting in Tunisia and Cairo. What they had in common was people who were told, and who believed inside themselves, that they were a certain way, and the society at large believed it.

  Bill Ayers

  Spring, Real, Rights

  Source: thepointmag.com

• All that means to me is that people who have a vision of a better world have a responsibility to open their eyes, to pay attention, to act on what the moment demands, and to be humble about that action.

  Bill Ayers

  Humble, Mean, Eye

  Source: thepointmag.com

• I know that's a little jarring, coming from a Weatherman, but what I mean by being humble is doubting if your action did anything. So you have to open your eyes, act and doubt. And then you have to repeat for a lifetime.

  Bill Ayers

  Humble, Mean, Eye

  Source: thepointmag.com

• That's in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn't work, but it's very hard to predict what will work.

  Bill Ayers

  Social, Social Change, Hard

  Source: thepointmag.com

• Politicians are conservative by nature.

  Bill Ayers

  Conservative, Politician

  Source: thepointmag.com

• Where's the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows. 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

  Thinking, Parks, Revolution

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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, Johnson

  Source: thepointmag.com

• We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can't the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It's a captured system.

  Bill Ayers

  Three, Want, Rich

  Source: thepointmag.com

• It was the Democratic Party, it was the Presidential election. We elected a president [Barack Obama]; we didn't elect a king. So all the speculation in the next three months - people camped out at his house, and wondering who's coming to visit, who's going to be the Secretary of State - that all struck me as inane and stupid.

  Bill Ayers

  Kings, Stupid, Party

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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 wheeled by her son waving a big American flag, and then seeing a guy with his baby in his arms saying, "I didn't want her to miss tonight! I wanted to be able to tell her!" And to see all these people, a Hispanic cop dancing with an old white woman, wow! I mean, that's the world I want to live in, and because it's the world I want to live in, I had a hard time leaving.

  Bill Ayers

  Baby, Mean, Son

  Source: thepointmag.com

• There was a sense of palpable relief that George [W.] Bush was leaving and that the Republicans had slipped back and that was a wonderful feeling.

  Bill Ayers

  Leaving, Feelings, Relief

  Source: thepointmag.com

• I found the place where I was beaten bloody forty years earlier and dragged to jail and that made me cry. When the family came out, that made me cry, and the reason I had a hard time leaving Grant Park was that to see a million people like that, feeling the way that million people felt, was so exhilarating.

  Bill Ayers

  Hard Times, Years, Jail

  Source: thepointmag.com

• Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President - that was exhilarating.

  Bill Ayers

  Country, Long, African American

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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 know, but they might not. So he might be a one-term president.

  Bill Ayers

  Thinking, Self, President

  Source: thepointmag.com

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

  Bill Ayers

  Said, Barack, Disappointed

  Source: thepointmag.com

• That's what [Abraham] Lincoln said. "The white man will always be above the black man. I don't want them to run for office, or have political rights, or vote. I want them to go back to Africa."

  Bill Ayers

  Running, Men, Rights

  Source: thepointmag.com

• It was Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips - these were the people who made abolition real. Now, none of you guys is in favor of slavery, right?

  Bill Ayers

  Real, People, Guy

  Source: thepointmag.com

• Frederick Douglass ran a primary campaign against [Abraham Lincoln] the second time around, in 1864. They hated him. Why'd they hate him? Because he said things like "I believe in white supremacy."

  Bill Ayers

  Hate, Believe, White

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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. Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.

  Bill Ayers

  Gay, Rights, Movement

  Source: thepointmag.com

• 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

  Illinois, Example, Speech

  Source: thepointmag.com

• If you listen to the debate, [Barack Obama] and [John] McCain said the same thing about gay rights.

  Bill Ayers

  Gay, Rights, Debate

  Source: thepointmag.com