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The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.

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
Means
Ends
Mean

More quotes by Saul Alinsky

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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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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.
Saul Alinsky
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The cry of the Have-Nots has never been give us our hearts, but always get off our backs they ask not for love but for breathing space.
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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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
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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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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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The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
Saul Alinsky
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The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.
Saul Alinsky
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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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History is a relay of revolutions.
Saul Alinsky
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The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
Saul Alinsky
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The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
Saul Alinsky
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Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers.
Saul Alinsky
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No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
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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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
Saul Alinsky
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Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs, fraternal, service, and nationality organizations. They are organizations and people that must be worked with as one would work with any other part of our populations - with respect, understanding, and sympathy.
Saul Alinsky
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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.
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