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

More quotes by 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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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.
Saul Alinsky
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Last guys don't finish nice.
Saul Alinsky
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Spouting quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclearpowered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.
Saul Alinsky
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The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth.
Saul Alinsky
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Power just goes to two poles — to those who've got money, and those who've got people.
Saul Alinsky
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Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.
Saul Alinsky
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Saul Alinsky
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A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
Saul Alinsky
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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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One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers.
Saul Alinsky
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The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
Saul Alinsky
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The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
Saul Alinsky
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One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky