Quotes from Saul Alinsky

This is the world as it is. This is where you start.

If people don't think they have the power to solve their problems, they won't even think about how to solve them.

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.

Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), 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.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in. We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral;

In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.

To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

People always do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith....Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

Last guys don't finish nice.

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.

To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation... If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead.

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed he who fears corruption fears life.

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

Last guys don't finish nice.