Saul Alinsky Quotes

Quotes about:

• Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

  Saul Alinsky

  Hurt, Cutting, People

  89 Copy quote

• Never let a crisis go to waste

  Saul Alinsky

  Waste, Crisis

  97 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Expression, Organization

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  Peace, Gun, Government

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.37, Vintage

  108 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  Cutting, Hair, Radicalism

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  121 Copy quote

• Control healthcare and you control the people

  Saul Alinsky

  People, Healthcare, Rules For Radicals

  104 Copy quote

• A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism.

  Saul Alinsky

  Order, Evil, Political

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.10, Vintage

  74 Copy quote

• 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 Alinsky

  Men, Devil, Kingdoms

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.9, Vintage

  39 Copy quote

• Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

  Saul Alinsky

  Men, Weapons, Impossible

  "Thirteen Tactics for Realistic Radicals: from Rules for Radicals".

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Change, Despair, Social

  195 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  Jobs, Issues, Firsts

  54 Copy quote

• The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.

  Saul Alinsky

  Mean, Organization, Community

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  Angel, Men, Issues

  32 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  Thinking, People, Problem

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Class, Organization

  65 Copy quote

• If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.

  Saul Alinsky

  Negative, Enough, Rules For Radicals

  "How Ann Coulter and the Far Right Are Using the Lefty Playbook to Troll Berkeley" by Josh Harkinson, www.motherjones.com. April 26, 2017.

  39 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  War, Mean, Ethics

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.29, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Christian, Book, Enemy

  Saul Alinsky (2016). “Thirteen Tactics for Realistic Radicals: from Rules for Radicals”, p.6, Vintage

  46 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  Events, Different, Purpose

  Saul Alinsky (2016). “Thirteen Tactics for Realistic Radicals: from Rules for Radicals”, p.6, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.

  Saul Alinsky

  Mean, Achieve, Results

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Letting Go, Attitude, Acceptance

  34 Copy quote

• 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 Alinsky

  Angel, Men, Enemy

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.13, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.

  Saul Alinsky

  People, Illusion, Disillusioned

  5 Copy quote

• The thirteenth rule of radical tactics: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

  Saul Alinsky

  Target, Tactics, Radical

  19 Copy quote

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

  Saul Alinsky

  Successful, Essentials, Weapons

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.75, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

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