Bill Ayers Quotes

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.

What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.

I'm not proud of killing, of being responsible for the death of a single person. I never will be.

I think guilt is directional. You should get rid of it, but the way to get rid of it is not to get rid of the guilt feelings. It is to get rid of the wrong that you did that caused the guilt feelings.

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.

I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings.

Fortunately most of the people who were involved in anti-Vietnam activity did not con themselves into being like the violent people they didn't want.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

There's no reason to be non-violent. There's no challenge unless you are living for people.

None of my problems come from the people I've killed.

And even if she isn’t—even if by some miracle, she survived the escape and has been squeezing out a living in the Wilds—she would never join forces with the resisters. She would never be violent or vengeful. Not Lena, who used to practically faint when she pricked a finger, who couldn’t even lie to a teacher about being late. She wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

The urging of that word, judgment, hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation.

I think we need to fight against Trumpism in the courts, we need to fight at the ballot box and online, and we need to do peaceful protesting. We need to use every lever at our disposal to make sure that the president doesn't hurt our country, our values, and our people.

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man.

Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.

They call me "a teacher, a fomenter of violence." I would say point blank, "That is a lie. I'm not for wanton violence, I'm for justice."

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?