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Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.

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
Alive
Dies
Freedom
Withers
Living
Flourishes
Death
Dictatorship
Thing
Democracy
Life
Either
Like
Grows

More quotes by 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.
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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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Power just goes to two poles — to those who've got money, and those who've got people.
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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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A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
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The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
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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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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.
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A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.
Saul Alinsky
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The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins
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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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
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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.
Saul Alinsky
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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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Human beings do not like to look squarely into the face of tragedy. Gloom is unpopular.
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
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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