Ayers Quotes & Sayings

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

He couldn't jeopardize the saloon because of some silly infatuation with an outlaw. Even one as beautiful as Mariah Ayers. — B. J. Daniels

It's intense in every sport. No matter what, USC vs. UCLA is crazy. Especially when it comes down to football and basketball, it's just nuts. — Akeem Ayers

Every relationship is an experiment and what one learns from it is so fascinating. — Bill Ayers

The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long. The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret. — Bill Ayers

I don't trip on that much. I just like to enjoy life and be happy. — Roy Ayers

But the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions of hip. — Bill Ayers

Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon, — Bill Ayers

When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing. — Roy Ayers

Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, once asked, "How shall we respond to the dreams of youth?" It is a dazzling and elegant question, a question that demands an answer
a range of answers, really, spiraling outward in widening circles. — Bill Ayers

I didn't respond to people thrusting microphones at me and asking me questions that were unanswerable in a sound bite. — Bill Ayers

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful. — Bill Ayers

The thing about Ayers Rock is that by the time you finally get there you are already a little sick of it. — Bill Bryson

I have an addiction to caffeine. — Bill Ayers

Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers should lead the Democratic Party. They are the only Democrats with any convictions. — Evan Sayet

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play. — Roy Ayers

It wasn't the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness. — George L. Ayers

You see guys getting in trouble, but you also see the good in people. It's just a matter of always learning. — Akeem Ayers

That was something. As opposed to nothing. — Kevin Ayers

If I am not in love, nothing is meaningful to me. I have no energy. — Kevin Ayers

Now I get exposure first with people directly in the clubs. This is a unique situation for me. — Roy Ayers

My great grandma, she's in her 80s, so she tells me a lot about the things she's seen. I learn a lot from her. — Akeem Ayers

Back in the day, I used to be in the studio recording 20 hours a day. And that was all of the time. I still record a lot of hours, but I don't go as long as I used to. — Roy Ayers

In a wild and diverse democracy each of us should be trying to talk to lots and lots and lots of people outside of our own kind of comfort zone and community, and that injunction goes even further for political leaders. They should talk to everyone, they should listen to everyone, and at the end of the day they should have a mind of their own. — Bill Ayers

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. — Bill Ayers

I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans. — Bill Ayers

When I start my day by working out, I find myself making better eating choices throughout the day, — Dana L. Ayers

People will always walk their own road and you cannot drag them onto yours. But, if you happen to wander into the path of a good person, you best take your mask off and shine or I promise, they will just walk on by. — Ava Ayers

It's amazing where the paranoid mind can take you. — Bill Ayers

Foreboding, and an all too familiar lack of control, roiled in my gut. My opponent might be hungry for a win, but I was famished. Something in my life would be a victory.
Sorry Shark, I wasn't going down tonight. No chance. - Jason Ayers — Lisa Kessler

If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything. — Bill Ayers

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words. — Roy Ayers

Lemuel Ayers had had a huge success producing and designing Kiss Me, Kate. He wanted to produce this as a musical. I got the job. It was a professional score. — Stephen Sondheim

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base - those people should be allowed to vote in the American election. — Bill Ayers

He turned as her heard — Kathleen Ayers

If the logic of capitalism is "expand or die," then either it has to die or the world has to die. — Bill Ayers

People in England were coming up to me, saying, My mother and father turned me on to your music. This happened to me 20 years ago. When I was 40 they were saying that. — Roy Ayers

There's something so remarkable in the intensity of taking care of somebody who can't take care of him or herself. And then watching that little person bloom into adolescence. — Bill Ayers

I voted for Obama and I was delighted that he's been elected. — Bill Ayers

The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message, and we, the musicians, are the messengers. — Roy Ayers

I'd rather marry lump of steaming horseshit than you." Lucy jutted her chin out."Smells better too. — Sidney Ayers

Two thousand people a day were being murdered in Vietnam in a terrorist war, an official terrorist war. — Bill Ayers

Nixon probably was a nice guy. — Bill Ayers

I can't survive,' he once told me of his refusal to come indoors,'if I can't hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it. — Steve Lopez

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

It's a wonderful feeling just being in this creative motif. — Roy Ayers

Whether it's putting on a bunny costume and running with friends, or simply appreciating the whining coming out of the guy next to you, races offer moments when you can simply enjoy the people around you and feel happy. — Dana L. Ayers

I still look good. I'm trippin', but people tell me that all the time. So check it out, I'm 63, and still kicking. I've been putting records out every year. — Roy Ayers

Having good health, being able to breathe and be happy, that's one of the most beautiful gifts. On top of that, I have the gift to play music and make people happy through that. I'm just telling you from my heart, I'm so in love with life. — Roy Ayers

Just hearing crowds along the course cheering and ringing cowbells for you can make you want to keep racing. — Dana L. Ayers

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. — Bill Ayers

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory. — Bill Ayers

There is a pivotal point in every interaction between humans which sets the course in their relationship. Do you hide or do you shine? Which way are you going to go?
Hide or shine? — Ava Ayers

Strength training with weights really does improve running. — Dana L. Ayers

Dunbar-Ortiz strips us of our forged innocence, shocks us into new awareness, and draws a straight line from the sins of our fathers-settler-colonialism, the doctrine of discovery, the myth of manifest destiny, white supremacy, theft and systematic killing-to the contemporary condition of permanent war, invasion and occupation, mass incarceration, and the constant use and threat of state violence. — Bill Ayers

Martin Luther King was only an activist for 13 years and every year he changed and every year he became more radical. By the end he was calling for revolution. People don't know this because they go to too many prayer breakfasts on his birthday. — Bill Ayers

Andrew Breitbart, self-described media mogul, had several screws loose or missing and was the grinning bomb-thrower of the radical right. He was the attack dog kept on a tight leash and brought out on special occasions to hiss and to menace. — Bill Ayers

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. — Bill Ayers

These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people. — Kevin Ayers

I can see why my daughter likes you."
"Do you think she's falling for my dashing good looks, my charm, or the fact that I supply her with pastries? — Victoria Schwab

Martin Luther King Jr. was a great teacher and just a great person in general. — Akeem Ayers

I'd definitely love to play in Nashville again. That would be really good. — Roy Ayers

It wasn't that she believed in voodoo, precisely - but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo - and that was scary enough.

-Coralee Ayers — Caitlin Rush

You grow and learn a lot about the industry and what happens behind closed doors over the years. — Roy Ayers

Editing is like attending a ten year reunion with your characters. — Stephanie Ayers

I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I'd been more unifying, I wish I'd been more principled. — Bill Ayers

I find some unity with Ron Paul. — Bill Ayers

Some people really trip on success or popularity. My friends would talk to me about that, about tripping on all this stuff, but you know what I tripped on? I started buying property. — Roy Ayers

Nothing is more boring than some old person going on and on about the way things used to be. — Bill Ayers

I always had this energy level that made me want to come to New York. — Roy Ayers

You've got to be a Lakers fan growing up in L.A. with all these championships. — Akeem Ayers

there's something satisfying and liberating about covering ground solely by moving our own bodies. — Dana L. Ayers

I don't like rap that you can't understand. The youth is so quick and alert. — Roy Ayers

The rhythm of being an activist today involves a pretty simple rhythm. You have to open your eyes to the reality before you. You have to look and see. — Bill Ayers

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. — Bill Ayers

One single letter cures the blank page. — Stephanie Ayers

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. — Bill Ayers

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

Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, and Jeremiah Wright. This is a group I've previously called Obama's founding fathers. — Dinesh D'Souza

I wish I knew as much about anything today as I knew about everything when I was twenty. — Bill Ayers

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war. — Bill Ayers

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk. — Roy Ayers

Soul has no musical geographical or racial boundaries. — Roy Ayers

We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it. — Kevin Ayers

Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country. — Bill Ayers

It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America. — Jon Voight

Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them. — Bill Ayers

I was arrested in 1965 for opposing the war in Vietnam. There were 39 of us arrested that day. But thousands opposed us. And the majority of the people in the country supported the war then. — Bill Ayers

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.. — Bill Ayers

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

The US is indeed a terrorist nation ... It's also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today. — Bill Ayers

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases. — Bill Ayers

When I was young, communism, which had a certain allure to me, was clearly a failed experiment in the Soviet Union and in China. And yet, anti-communism was as bad. — Bill Ayers

In some odd way that you don't understand and can't begin to articulate you feel and acquaintance with it--a familiarity on an unfamiliar level. Somewhere in the deep sediment of your being some long-dormant fragment of primordial memory, some little severed tail of DNA, has twitched or stirred. It is a motion much too faint to be understood or interpreted, but somehow you feel certain that this large, brooding, hypnotic presence has an importance to you at a species level--perhaps even at a sort of tadpole level--and that in some way your visit here is more than happenstance. — Bill Bryson

And besides, if my soul's impeccable taste in music throws you off, then learn to tune me out. — Victoria Schwab

DJs and people in the street know what they like. — Roy Ayers

So stop fighting. Let the noise go white. Let it be like water. And float. — Victoria Schwab

I was a militant. — Bill Ayers

Then there is the matter of the presidential untruths. The problem is not just that Barack Obama says things that are untrue but that he lies about what Barack Obama has said. He brags that he set red lines, but then he says it was the U.N. had set red lines. He boasts of pulling out every U.S. soldier from Iraq but then alleges that President Bush, the Iraqis, or Maliki did that. He claims that ISIS are Jayvees but then claims they are serious. But his prevarication too is habitual and was known in 2008 when it was discovered that he had simply misled the nation about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. He had no desire, in the transparent manner of John Kerry, Al Gore, John McCain, or George W. Bush, to release his medical records or college transcripts. If Americans find their president ill-informed, there was no record that he was informed in 2008. His gaffes were far more frequent than those of Sarah Palin, who knew there were 50 states. — Anonymous

The thing about 'Soft Machine' and me was that I never considered another profession. — Kevin Ayers