Quote

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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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
Truth
Changing
Ideological
Doe
Begin
Realities
Everything
Open
Dogma
Different
Situation
Relative
Working
Respond
Organizer
Society
Situations
Shackles
Free
Extent
Dilemma
Reality
Fixed
Widely

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
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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.
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The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be.
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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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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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As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.
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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.
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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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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.
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Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers.
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Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live.
Saul Alinsky
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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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I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism…The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.
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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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The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
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Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.
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