Quote

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.

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
Belief
Fixed
Opportunity
Conviction
Truth
Generally
Power
Decisions
Right
Reach
People
Destiny
Control
Destinies
Decision
Freely

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
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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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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 preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins
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The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
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The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth.
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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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Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.
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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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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 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.
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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
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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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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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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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.
Saul Alinsky
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The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
Saul Alinsky
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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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