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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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The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
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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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Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.
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The cry of the Have-Nots has never been give us our hearts, but always get off our backs they ask not for love but for breathing space.
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The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
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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.
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If people don't think they have the power to solve their problems, they won't even think about how to solve them.
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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.
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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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My only fixed truth is a belief in people, a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they'll generally reach the right decisions.
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Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
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Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.
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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 greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
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The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
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The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
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The despair is there now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.
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Always remember the first rule of power tactics power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
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A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
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