Saul Alinsky Quotes

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Saul Alinsky

Profession : Activist

Birth : January 30, 1909

No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

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

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

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

Saul Alinsky

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 Alinsky

A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saul Alinsky

Last guys don't finish nice.

Saul Alinsky

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

Saul Alinsky

All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.

Saul Alinsky