Top 100 Saul D. Alinsky Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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. I.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

52. “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

53. “The essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was “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.” And it was.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

54. “The real action is in the enemy’s reaction.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

55. “WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. 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. In.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

56. “One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. 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 D. Alinsky

57. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

58. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

59. “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

60. “One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

61. “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

62. “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

63. “To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non controversial sauces, is a waste of time. They cannot on deliberately will not understand what we are discussing here.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

64. “There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. The.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

65. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

66. “History is a relay of revolutions.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

67. “To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

68. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

69. “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

70. “The prerequisite for an ideology is possession of a basic truth.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

71. “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 D. Alinsky

72. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

73. “A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises – which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

74. “Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

75. “America’s corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

76. “The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

77. “The standards of judgment 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

78. “This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

79. “All of life is partisan. There is no dispassionate objectivity. The revolutionary ideology is not confined to a specific limited formula. It is a series of general principles, rooted in Lincoln’s May 19, 1856, statement: “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

80. “Last guys don’t finish nice.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

81. “In the beginning the organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

82. “We are not here concerned with people who profess the democratic faith but yearn for the dark security of dependency where they can be spared the burden of decisions. Reluctant to grow up, or incapable of doing so, they want to remain children and be cared for by others. Those who can, should be encouraged to grow; for the others, the fault lies not in the system but in themselves.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

83. “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

84. “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

85. “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

86. “People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

87. “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

88. “If one wants to act, the dilemma is how and where; there is no “when?” with time running out, the time is obviously now.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

89. “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 D. Alinsky

90. “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

91. “These are the days when man has his hands on the sublime while he is up to his hips in the muck of madness.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

92. “A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

93. “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

94. “In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

95. “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

96. “There is a feeling of death hanging over the nation. Today.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

97. “Citizen participation is the animating spirit and force in a society predicated on voluntarism. We.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

98. “The function of an organizer is to raise questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

99. “What the present generation wants is what all generations have always wanted – a meaning, a sense of what the world and life are – a chance to strive for some sort of order.”

— Saul D. Alinsky

100. “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