Bill Ayers Quotes

You can't change the world without a certain amount of healthy willingness to break the rules.

I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.

One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?

It's useful for activists just to be out there to keep you mindful and not get complacent, even if ultimately you think some of their criticism is misguided.

I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those who are now possible remain possible.

I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.

It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands.

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer Neither is resignation Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.

In this country, the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.

The church ... is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.

Where's the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows. The day before every revolution that's ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.

Disobedience is the vehicle of progress.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top.

If people were silent, nothing would change.

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.

I think, you're not blagging me on this ridiculous journey, with this bit of paper. I think if you want to change things, it's not with an X on a piece of paper, it's with an X on someone's forehead.

One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.

Change only takes place through action, not through meditation and prayer.

Activism is something that no one can fake. You get angry. You cry. But you never throw in your towel, because that anger is what is propelling you to further action.

If you aren't an activist you're an inactivist.