Quote

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

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
Lived
Must
Life
Whys
World
Wished
Rooted
Fantasy
Standards
Judgment

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
Saul Alinsky
Image
The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
Saul Alinsky
Image
A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.
Saul Alinsky
Image
History is a relay of revolutions.
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
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
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
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
As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.
Saul Alinsky
Image
A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers.
Saul Alinsky
Image
As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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
Image
Change means movement. Movement means friction.
Saul Alinsky
Image
The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
Saul Alinsky
Image
America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.
Saul Alinsky
Image
Power just goes to two poles — to those who've got money, and those who've got people.
Saul Alinsky
Image
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.
Saul Alinsky
Image
In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.
Saul Alinsky