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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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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
Known
Satire
Ridicule
Essential
Essentials
Weapons
Mankind
Humor
Tactician
Successful
Potent

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
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The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
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The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
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In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.
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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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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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The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
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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.
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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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No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
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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.
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Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.
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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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Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live.
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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The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
Saul Alinsky
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Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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