Saul D. Alinsky Quotes & Sayings

Last guys don't finish nice. — Saul D. Alinsky

Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation. — Saul D. Alinsky

The standards of judgement must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be. — Saul D. Alinsky

History is made up of "moral" judgments based on politics. We condemned Lenin's acceptance of money from the Germans in 1917 but were discreetly silent while our Colonel William B. Thompson in the same year contributed a million dollars to the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia. As allies of the Soviets in World War II we praised and cheered communist guerrilla tactics when the Russians used them against the Nazis during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union; we denounce the same tactics when they are used by communist forces in different parts of the world against us. The opposition's means, used against us, are always immoral and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human values. — Saul D. Alinsky

In his Social Contract, Rousseau noted the obvious, that Law is a very good thing for men with property and a very bad thing for men without property. — Saul D. Alinsky

People always do the right thing for the wrong reason. — Saul D. Alinsky

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance. — Saul D. Alinsky

A bit of a blurred vision of a better world. Much of an organizer's daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit. It is as though as an artist he is painting a tiny leaf. It is inevitable that sooner or later he will react with "What am I doing spending my whole life just painting one little leaf? The hell with it, I quit." What keeps him going is a blurred vision of a great mural where other artists - organizers - are painting their bits, and each piece is essential to the total. — Saul D. Alinsky

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts - one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 per cent difference - and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and yet stay together. But this is what the organizer must do. Ego — Saul D. Alinsky

A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution — Saul D. Alinsky

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 D. Alinsky

The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions. — Saul D. Alinsky

The sit-down strikers began to worry about the illegality of their action and the why and wherefore, and it was then the chief of all C.I.O. organizers, Lewis, gave them their rationale. He thundered, 'The right to a man's job transcends the right of private property! The C.I.O. stands squarely behind these sit-downs!' The sit-down strikers at GM cheered. — Saul D. Alinsky

There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. The — Saul D. Alinsky

Not only does a single- or even a dual-issue organization condemn you to a small organization, it is axiomatic that a single-issue organization won't last. An organization needs action as an individual needs oxygen. With only one or two issues there will certainly be a lapse of action, and then comes death. Multiple issues mean constant action and life. An — Saul D. Alinsky

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. — Saul D. Alinsky

Mark Twain once put it, "The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Power — Saul D. Alinsky

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. — Saul D. Alinsky

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. — Saul D. Alinsky

This is the world as it is. This is where you start. — Saul D. Alinsky

In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems. — Saul D. Alinsky

Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest. — Saul D. Alinsky

Today everything is so complex as to be incomprehensible. What sense does it make for men to walk on the moon while other men are waiting on welfare lines, or in Vietnam killing and dying for a corrupt dictatorship in the name of freedom? — Saul D. Alinsky

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. — Saul D. Alinsky

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end. — Saul D. Alinsky

The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the Haves is a ritualistic justification of their possessions. — Saul D. Alinsky

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. — Saul D. Alinsky

Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego. CONFLICT — Saul D. Alinsky

The life of man upon earth is a warfare ... - JOB 7:1 — Saul D. Alinsky

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 delegatepos — Saul D. Alinsky

The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends... are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land. — Saul D. Alinsky

The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with the ribbons of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales. From — Saul D. Alinsky

Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough. — Saul D. Alinsky

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; — Saul D. Alinsky

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

Let the liberal turn to the course of action, the course of all radicals, and the amused look vanishes from the face of society as it snarls, "That's radical!" Society has good reason to fear the radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives. — Saul D. Alinsky

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem. — Saul D. Alinsky

You regard yourself as tolerant, and in that one adjective you most fittingly describe yourself. You really don't like people you tolerate them. You are very tolerant, MR. BUT. — Saul D. Alinsky

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

The opposition's means, used against us, are always immoral and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human values. George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman, pointed out the variations in ethical definitions by virtue of where you stand. Mendoza said to Tanner, "I am a brigand; I live by robbing the rich." Tanner replied, "I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands." The — Saul D. Alinsky