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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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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
Issue
Concern
Personal
Issues
Interest
Inversely
Means
Varies
Ends
Vary
Mean
Ethics

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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.
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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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The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
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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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One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.
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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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Power just goes to two poles — to those who've got money, and those who've got people.
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America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.
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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.
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Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
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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.
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The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
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Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live.
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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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Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.
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You cannot meet today's crisis tomorrow.
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Dogma, Whatever Form It Takes, Is The Ultimate Enemy Of Human Freedom.
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In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.
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