Bill Ayers Quotes

The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it.

I care about education for everyone, not just the elite.

It will not do to say we are too poor to educate the people--we are too poor not to educate them

Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.

I see education in the U.K. as a civil rights struggle.

Michelle Obama has also done a lot of work in the scope of educational equity and being able to work with her on some of her initiatives has been awesome. I'm very honored.

If we were to compile a list of the ways in which the United States has made both itself and the wider world a better place, then at or very near the top would be its commitment to universal education.

It's not enough to train today's workforce. We also have to prepare tomorrow's workforce by guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education.

Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching 'One Day' is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.

I want to be an activist professor.

Inner city education must change. Our responsibility is not merely to provide access to knowledge; we must produce educated people.

Germany did not acquire its admirable educational system by popular demand … the crowd cannot guide itself, cannot help itself in its blind impotence.

Access to a quality education in our country is a civil right for all Americans young and old. But to ensure it for scores of our fellow Americans, we must rethink education.

I've never believed the charter movement was exclusively for socially and economically disadvantaged kids.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

I'm very, very focused on not only creating world class schools at scale, but changing the public policy in this country that every day prevents children from getting access to the American dream.

Education is the motor-force of revolution.

When you're fighting for social justice, one of my biggest pet peeves is speaking out of ignorance.

A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.

Let me ask you: Should only children of the wealthy have access to quality early education? Should only children of the wealthy have access to a college degree? The answer - the only answer - is: no.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

A core part of Teach For America's mission has always been affecting positive change in the traditional public school system.

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.