Quotes by Bill Ayers

I was a militant.

I thought in 1965 that my job was to convince most Americans to be against the war. So I spent summers knocking on doors, handing out literature, trying to talk to people who didn’t agree with me, trying to get them to see the war was wrong. And by 1968 a majority of Americans did oppose the war.

The nice thing about being detained in Canada is it’s like being in a Days Inn; it’s very clean and very nice.

Your body’s always going through changes. It’s fattening or thinning or wrinkling or blotching, and the only thing you really have control over is putting some decoration on it.

I didn’t kill innocent people.

If you read the literature of Soviet Communism, you see a dogma that’s chilling. On the other hand, if you read the literature of anti-communism, it’s every bit as dogmatic.

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 actually producing real things rather than spinning our wheels in dreams of consumer heaven.

I get up every morning and think, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I’m back to work tomorrow, and that’s the only way you can do it.

Being an activist and an artist – those two things should go together. You should allow the artistic sensibility to control some of your activism, but never should it be allowed to paralyze you.

I don’t regret setting bombs.