Bill Ayers Quotes About Students

Quotes about: Students

• The fact is that in my prep school, I went to a boarding school, 39 young men graduated from that prep school. Five years later, a quarter of us were in SDS, in Students for Democratic Society. Not because we were particularly chosen or because we were as I say, we were lucky but we were mainly luckily to grow up at a time where this black freedom movement was really defining the moral character of what it meant to be a citizen and a person.

  Bill Ayers

  Growing Up, School, Character

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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

  Bill Ayers

  Students, Social, Program

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• It transmitted because on the campuses, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was recruiting, was organizing. Students for a Democratic Society was founded at Michigan just a couple years before I got there. So, there was a kind of a churning of political awareness. It was just beginning.

  Bill Ayers

  Couple, Years, Political

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• That's where we all kind of were in the mid-1960s. Students for a Democratic Society grew from a small group of socialists at the university of Michigan into a national organization, and in many ways, its growth was driven by the Vietnam War.

  Bill Ayers

  War, Organization, Growth

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Now teach-ins are fairly common or they become common place. But in 1965, the Students for Democratic Society in Ann Harbor organized the first teach-in. The way it happened was that we were advocating for a strike that we advocated that the faculty should strike in solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle.

  Bill Ayers

  Struggle, Way, Firsts

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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

  Bill Ayers

  Rights, Movement, Students

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I remember one moment when we heard two students saying don't talk to those guys, meaning my brother and me. They've just memorized that stupid fact sheet. And we thought, gosh do we sound that good? It didn't seem possible. But that was my introduction to politics.

  Bill Ayers

  Brother, Stupid, Two

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The end of Students for a Democratic Society is viewed by me and a lot of other people as a terrible sorry in many ways, tragic event even though I participated in it and played some role in it. But I regret a lot of that.

  Bill Ayers

  Sorry, Regret, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I was terrible student at Michigan, terrible. Because there was too much else to do. I was learning form too many other sources to go to class.

  Bill Ayers

  Class, Michigan, Too Much

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• 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. Two months after that, Kennedy was assassinated. Two months after that, Henry Kissinger emerged from the swamp he was living in at Harvard with a plan to expand the war.

  Bill Ayers

  Kings, War, Congratulations

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• 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. And if you read nothing else - if your viewers read nothing else - then the April 4, 1967, speech at Riverside Church called "Beyond Vietnam," that's where he says the greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my country. And he connects the triplets of evil, racism, militarism, and materialism, and that connection makes him a radical.

  Bill Ayers

  Country, Kings, Thinking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• 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

  Media, Class, Soldier

  Source: thepointmag.com

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

  Bill Ayers

  Passion, Commitment, Today

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Bill Ayers". Interview with Rachel DeWoskin, therumpus.net. December 1, 2013.

• Students for a Democratic Society was founded in 1961.

  Bill Ayers

  Students, Democratic, Democratic Society

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I taught. I lectured at universities. I spoke to my students. I spoke in certain public forums. But what I didn't do was respond to microphones being thrust in my face and saying, what is your relationship with Obama and are you an unrepentant terrorist?

  Bill Ayers

  Faces, Taught, Students

  "Which Way The Wind Blows: Bill Ayers On Obama". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 18, 2008.

• [Students for a Democratic Society] was on many campuses and it was a powerful organization. It was founded by Tom Hayden, who passed away very recently. It was one of the founders of SDS and that chief writer of the Port Huron Statement, which is still worth reading. It's kind of the Bernie Sanders campaign document in a funny way.

  Bill Ayers

  Powerful, Reading, Organization

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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