Bill Ayers Quotes

They [politicians] have defined the war simply in terms of the detonation of explosives. When you look at the broader picture, America is mired in two wars that we're losing at the moment. We have a political environment that is as poisonous as anything I've seen, at least since the end of Vietnam.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

I will not be the first American President who lost a war!

I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake.

We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.

Sweet is war to those who know it not.

I predict you will sink step by step into a bottomless quagmire, however much you spend in men and money." (On Vietnam War)

These aren't joyous times when we have war in Iraq. These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.

I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

I'd like President Bush to think maybe there's another way to think, that maybe Kissinger was wrong when he says we had to go in there because he was wrong about Vietnam.

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

War is failure of diplomacy.

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, '69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it's worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started - an outright war started in 1962.

The U.S. military cannot fight Iraq's war for them.

The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realise you've forgotten to give the other parents a pick up time.

American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace.

I think what Mr. Trump has made clear is that he would not undertake optional wars, what I have called wars of choice, a la, say Iraq in 2003 or Libya, for the purposes of transforming another country. It's not clear whether Hillary Clinton, if she were to have the opportunity, would do such a thing again or whether she would have taken a - the lesson from both Iraq and Libya that we ought not to be undertaking those kinds of wars of choice.

People say the war in Iraq is a bad war, and the war in Afghanistan is a good war, but what's the difference between them? Democratic people around the world cannot accept that this is a good war. This is just endless war.

What I could not support was a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

The reason why many young people in the Vietnam War era were active was their lives were threatened by the draft and they were going to perhaps be forced to go overseas and fight in an immoral war.