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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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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
Unpopular
Humans
Gloom
Looks
Tragedy
Like
Beings
Face
Faces
Look
Squarely
Human

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.
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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 end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
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The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
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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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One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.
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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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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
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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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Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.
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Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers.
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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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Change means movement. Movement means friction.
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A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
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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. 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
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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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You cannot meet today's crisis tomorrow.
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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An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
Saul Alinsky
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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