Quotes by 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.”

“Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden youre 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.”

“Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have”

“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.”

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”

“Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have”

“Last guys dont finish nice.”

“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.”

“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”

“We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.”

There were those few, and there will be more, who really liked people, loved people—all people. They were the human torches setting aflame the hearts of men so that they passionately fought for the rights of their fellow men, all men. They were hated, feared, and branded as radicals . They wore the epithet of radical as a badge of honor. They fought for the right of men to govern themselves, for the right of men to walk erect as free men and not grovel before kings, for the Bill of Rights, for the abolition of slavery, for public education, and for everything decent and worth while. They loved men and fought for them. Their neighbor’s misery was their misery. They acted as they believed.

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.

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. Youre just not there.

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.

There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of mans faith in himself and in his power to direct his future.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden youre 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.

Ive never joined any organization - not even the ones Ive organized myself. I prize my own independence too much.

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, theyll generally reach the right decisions.

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.