Words matter. These are the best Saul Alinsky Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.
The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded.
First rule of change is controversy. You can’t get away from it for the simple reason all issues are controversial. Change means movement, and movement means friction, and friction means heat, and heat means controversy.
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
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. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events.
Last guys don’t finish nice.
The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy.’
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.
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
The first step in community organization is community disorganization.
If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community, I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out.
Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
History is a relay of revolutions.
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
‘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.
I’ve never joined any organization – not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much.
If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?
There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man’s faith in himself and in his power to direct his future.
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 does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you are not even a failure. You’re just not there.
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
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.
