Bill Ayers Professions : Professor Born : December 26, 1944 Browse All Authors Top 202 quotes by Bill Ayers [Barack Obama] was running for Senate and he's saying, I'm not for gay marriage because I'm a Christian. Jump off a bridge! I mean what the hell are you talking about? You know, I mean, what's he doing now? He's evolving. Evolving? Well, evolve for Christ's sake! And this is a guy - the whole gay community, and the whole environmental community and all these other people said, he's our guy. Bill Ayers christian running mean We're actually saying, here's a principle that I'd like to arc toward. That's a very different role in life. I didn't expect [Barack] Obama to go to the root of things. I didn't expect him to have a principled position on anything. I mean, just pay some moderate attention to the guy. Bill Ayers guy roots mean Agitators, organizers, activists, intellectuals aren't bound by those rules. We're not trying to figure out, how do I thread this particular needle? Bill Ayers thread figures trying Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world. Bill Ayers conservative world moving You can be disappointed but only if you thought [Barack Obama] was something that he said he wasn't! Bill Ayers disappointed barack said The Right said, [Barack Obama] is lying, he's a socialist who pals around with terrorists, he's a secret Muslim and blah blah blah. That was their line. The liberals all said, He's winking at me, I can feel him winking in my direction. He wasn't winking. He said exactly who he was and he's lived that out perfectly. Bill Ayers pals secret lying [Barack] Obama doesn't disappoint me, because all during the campaign he said, I'm a pragmatic, middle-of-the-road, compromising politician. Bill Ayers campaigns compromise politician 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 smart attitude thinking 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 congratulations kings war 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 michigan too-much class What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics. Bill Ayers mainstream moderates my-family My dad was a [Theodor] Roosevelt Democrat. Bill Ayers my-dad democrat dad When [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama. So that's kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would've said, "I don't have any politics. I'm a business person." Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it. Bill Ayers dad mom views I more or less shared the view that life should be lived. Bill Ayers should views I was a kid and I studied when I had to [live]. Bill Ayers kids We have arguments [with my father] and we had a lot of arguments in the years when I was at Michigan. Bill Ayers michigan father years One of the things that happened that I think is noteworthy, my parents were pretty tolerant people given their position in society. They were pretty interesting about being interesting able to look at their children and think oh my children know things and they gave us a lot of sense of our own agency, and that may be a kind of a ruling class trait. Bill Ayers agency children thinking Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant. Bill Ayers driven drs parent Hating war in Vietnam in 1965 was minority position. Bill Ayers minorities hate war My father lived with me the last five years of his life and passed away of Alzheimer's, and at that point he was saying to anyone who would listen, "We all hated the war in Vietnam." Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on. Bill Ayers hate war father Similar Authors Bryan Stevenson professor Bruce Greenwald professor Bruce Ames professor Brian Wansink professor Brian Schmidt professor Brian Martin professor All Authors