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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
Essentials
Weapons
Mankind
Humor
Tactician
Successful
Potent
Known
Satire
Ridicule
Essential

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
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History is a relay of revolutions.
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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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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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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.
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In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.
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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 tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
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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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The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
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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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Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end.
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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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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 only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
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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The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
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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The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
Saul Alinsky
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The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.
Saul Alinsky