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The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

Saul Alinsky

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Saul Alinsky
Age: 63 †
Born: 1909
Born: January 30
Died: 1972
Died: June 12
Activist
Human Rights Activist
Sociologist
Trade Unionist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Saul David Alinsky
World
Whether
Certainty
Pain
Injustice
Spirit
Inner
Light
Outside
Human
Inside
Darken
Humans
Doubt
Glows
Right
Small
Possess
Believe
Dark
Cruelty

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.
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In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of the common good and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed.
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The very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.
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In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.
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The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
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Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing - but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.
Saul Alinsky
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Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end.
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America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.
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One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.
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The classic statement on polarization comes from Christ: 'He that is not with me is against me.' (Luke 11:23) He allowed no middle ground to the moneychangers in the Temple. One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.
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An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
Saul Alinsky
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Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
Saul Alinsky
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Saul Alinsky
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As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.
Saul Alinsky
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Human beings do not like to look squarely into the face of tragedy. Gloom is unpopular.
Saul Alinsky
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The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
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The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
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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.
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They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.
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Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.
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