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The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.

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
Mean
Unethical
Use
Means

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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 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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The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.
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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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The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth.
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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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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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No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
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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.
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Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts.
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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.
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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.
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The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
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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.
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The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
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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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The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.
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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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Always remember the first rule of power tactics power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
Saul Alinsky
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In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.
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