Saul Alinsky Quotes

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
History is a relay of revolutions.
Last guys don't finish nice.
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.
The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.
As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.
Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day, and 8,000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, 'Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.'
First rule of change is controversy. You can't get away from it for the simple reason all issues are controversial. Change means movement, and movement means friction, and friction means heat, and heat means controversy.
If the ends don't justify the means, what does?
If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community, I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out.
It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you are not even a failure. You're just not there.
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AuthorName
Saul Alinsky
Profession
Activist
BirthDate
30 January, 1909
DeathDate
12 June, 1972
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