Tom Hayden Quotes

Why should American atrocities be merely unsettling, but a trip to Hanoi unconscionable?

Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my seating because of my trips to Hanoi.

They motivate us to play, be affectionate, seek adventure and be loyal.

A silent majority and government by the people is incompatible.

I think people are entitled to march without a permit. When you have a few hundred thousand people on the street you have permission.

Our crime was that we were beginning to live a new and contagious life-style without official authorization.

There's so much benevolence on helping your fellow person. And the morality that helped build our country is based on the values that are found in the Bible. And as we look at problems, maybe we're getting away from those values. And in my little small way, I want to encourage people to get back into those values.

I am the Vietcong. We are everywhere! We are all Vietcong.

The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history thats least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

Then you have [Donald] Trump. So it could be the tightest, most hazardous race in political history and we can't afford to allow Trump to slither through. So that's where I'm at.

Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.

Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad.

Communism is one of the options that can improve people's lives.

Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout.

He led quite a great life, ... He was an Old Testament figure railing against the establishment - a Jewish guy from New York who became a Buddhist, a poet, a musician.

We ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is' that there is no viable alternative to the present.

The peace and justice movement has to expand and not run away from the plight of gang members.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.

All my life I've been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: "Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?" And so I went with them. Period.

[Donald] Trump is fascism, that's all, so we have to find a way to work it out between Hillary [Clinton] and Bernie [Sanders].

He likes to take strolls by himself and believes dog-catchers are friendly innkeepers who'll take care of a meal. He's gullible and has never learned to fight back against a ruthless world.

When the students in the South, the blacks, started demonstrating, that was the beginning of the time of students becoming a social force around the world.

Most centrist Democrats... try to distance themselves from controversies that recall the 1960s. There are journalistic centrists as well, who avoid hard truths for the sake of acceptance and legitimacy.

His herding instinct is so strong that he confuses tractors on a baseball field for sheep. He was hospitalized twice. Once by a line drive and once for attacking a tractor tread.

I was in the category of people who thought that his [Bernie Sanders ]campaign was worthy, even noble and it would push Hillary [Clinton] to the left.

Vietnam is unique of all the countries in the world, I believe, in having the longest continuous struggle against foreign aggression of any country that has retained its national identity.

The politicians of New York have everything that is necessary to make proper decisions and they will have to live with what happens afterwards. The worst scenario is the politicians covering their eyes and turning it over to the FBI.

Ive written a book on gangs, taught a course on gangs at Occidental.

I don't think I'll ever fully get over losing the city council seat. I don't know how that happened. But it was less than 1 percent out of 50,000 votes. I'd put in six or seven years into changing L.A.

We're looking at a quandary here where Bernie's [Sanders] the winner on a moral and even a political basis. He's made history, and she's the winner on the mathematical basis.

What I said was that I was at first supportive of Bernie [Sanders] when he came to Los Angeles for his first rally, I was there, I was supportive.

It was gonna be a race [2016] that set a foundation for the Left in the future. But given the math, I didn't think he was gonna make it. And so I started to shift to Hillary [Clinton] and to discussions of the platform and discussions of what to do.

The last time I saw Robert Kennedy was in an elevator by accident also, going up, one week before he was shot.

And I've always been very close to my friends and allies in the black community, the Latino community and organized labor.