Bill Ayers Thinking Quotations

I think I am a radical. I have never deviated from that. By radical, I mean someone trying to go to the root of things.

I don't think of myself as a particularly nostalgic person.

I'm an optimist in my heart - I'm a hopeless pollyanna just like my mother - but a pessimist in my head. I think that's the dialectic we all need to be in.

I'm different in the sense that every minute of every day, I change. I'm thinking. But the basic principles that have powered me forward are still there. They're not different.

I don't think saying "I was wrong here, I was wrong there" absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.

I don't buy the whole mythology of the sixties. I think I'm an intergenerational person.

I get up every morning and think...today I'm going to end capitalism.

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.

I think Bowe Bergdahl, if he deserted, is a hero - I think throughout history we should build monuments to the unknown deserters.