Saul Alinsky Quotes & Sayings

The fourth rule is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. — Saul Alinsky

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

If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate. — Saul Alinsky

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

Control healthcare and you control the people — Saul Alinsky

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

Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose. — Saul Alinsky

The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree. — Saul Alinsky

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. — Saul Alinsky

In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt. — Saul Alinsky

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have. — Saul Alinsky

The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth. — Saul Alinsky

The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead. — Saul Alinsky

The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action'; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. — Saul Alinsky

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. — Saul Alinsky

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means ... — Saul Alinsky

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions. — Saul Alinsky

The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. — Saul Alinsky

All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

Dogma, Whatever Form It Takes, Is The Ultimate Enemy Of Human Freedom. — Saul Alinsky

The establishment can accept being screwed, but not being laughed at — Saul Alinsky

The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.' — Saul Alinsky

Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur for an ever expanding democratic way of life. — Saul Alinsky

Do one of three things. One, go and 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

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. — Saul Alinsky

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

The first step in community organization is community disorganization. — Saul Alinsky

This book will not
contain any panacea or dogma; I detest and fear dogma." ...
"This is not an ideological book except insofar as argument for change,"...
"ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth"...
" An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth. "...
" In the end he has one conviction - a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions.
I am not concerned if this faith in people is regarded as a prime truth and therefore a contradiction of what I have already written, for life is a story of contradictions. Believing in people, the radical has the job of organizing them so that they will have the power — Saul Alinsky

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. — Saul Alinsky

In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons?afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. 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; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it. — Saul Alinsky

From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams ... only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues ... Until he has those means and power instruments, his tactics are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals. — Saul Alinsky

Theres another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. 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 change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. — Saul Alinsky

The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength. — Saul Alinsky

'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. — Saul Alinsky

If the ends don't justify the means, what does? — Saul Alinsky

The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results. — Saul Alinsky

It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target. There is a constant squirming and moving and strategy ... on the part of the designated target. The forces for change must keep this in mind and pin that target down securely. If an organization permits responsibility to be diffused and distributed in a number of areas, attack becomes impossible. — Saul Alinsky

The organized labor movement as it is constituted today is as much a concomitant of a capitalist economy as is capital. Organized labor is predicated upon the basic premise of collective bargaining between employers and employees. This premise can obtain only for an employer-employee type of society. If the labor movement is to maintain its own identity and security, it must of necessity protect that kind of society. — Saul Alinsky

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

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. — Saul Alinsky

The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody. — Saul Alinsky

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. — Saul Alinsky

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. That means working in the system. — Saul Alinsky

No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation. — Saul Alinsky

Never do for someone what they can do for themselves. — Saul Alinsky

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara ... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport. — Saul Alinsky

Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea. — Saul Alinsky

History is a relay of revolutions. — Saul Alinsky

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. — Saul Alinsky

The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion. — Saul Alinsky

Our world has always had two kinds of changers, the social changers and the money changers. — Saul Alinsky

Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact that the welfare of business rests upon the welfare of the consumers of a nation; that business or free enterprise will function in a democracy only so long as the democracy functions. — Saul Alinsky

We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis. — Saul Alinsky

Power goes to two poles-to those who've got the money and those who've got the people. — Saul Alinsky

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. — Saul Alinsky

The American people were, in the beginning, Revolutionaries and Tories. The American people ever since have been Revolutionaries and Tories. They have been Revolutionaries and Tories regardless of the labels of the past and present. Regardless of whether they were Federalists, Democrat-Republicans, Whigs, Know-Nothings, Free Soilers, Unionists or Confederates, Populists, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, or Progressives. They have been and are profiteers and patriots. They have been and are conservatives, liberals, and radicals. — Saul Alinsky

Do you like people? Most people claim that they like people with, of course, a "few exceptions." When the exceptions are added together it becomes clear that they include a vast majority of the people. It becomes equally clear that most people like just a few people, their kind of people, and either do not actively care for or actively dislike most of the "other" people. — Saul Alinsky

Life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. — Saul Alinsky

Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. — Saul Alinsky

People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises. — Saul Alinsky

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

Liberals like people with their heads, radicals like people with both their heads and their hearts. — Saul Alinsky

I've never joined any organization - not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. — Saul Alinsky

Human beings do not like to look squarely into the face of tragedy. Gloom is unpopular. — Saul Alinsky

The organizers first job is to create the issues or problems, and organizations must be based on many issues. The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act ... An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent. — Saul Alinsky

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

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

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

Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. — Saul Alinsky

Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is ... Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority. — Saul Alinsky

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

The people of America are red, white, black, yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the "in between." They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new mankind
a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future. — Saul Alinsky

Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. — Saul Alinsky

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

America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society. — Saul Alinsky

The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. — Saul Alinsky

From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. — Saul Alinsky

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

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. — Saul Alinsky

You cannot meet today's crisis tomorrow. — Saul Alinsky

Never let a crisis go to waste — Saul Alinsky

A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. — Saul Alinsky

The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible. — Saul Alinsky

Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day, and 8,000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, 'Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.' — Saul Alinsky

Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt. — Saul Alinsky

A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. — Saul Alinsky

The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded. — Saul Alinsky

The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins — Saul Alinsky

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. — Saul Alinsky

True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. — Saul Alinsky