Quote

As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.

Saul Alinsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Organizer
Start
Reality
Would
Like
World

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

Image
Always remember the first rule of power tactics power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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
Image
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Saul Alinsky
Image
A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Last guys don't finish nice.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Change means movement. Movement means friction.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Dogma, Whatever Form It Takes, Is The Ultimate Enemy Of Human Freedom.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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