Rules for Radicals Quotes

“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, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“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 Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation... To attempt to operate on a good-will rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something the world has not yet experienced.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“The rough category "middle class" can be broken down into three groups: lower middle class, with incomes from $6,000 to $11,000; middle middle class, $12,000 to $20,000; and upper middle class, $20,000 to $35,000.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“Democracy is not an end; it is the best political means available toward the achievement of these values.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“All effective actions require the passport of morality.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“Those who, for whatever combination of reasons, encourage the opposite of reformation, become the unwitting allies of the far political right. Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“Others sick with guilt and not knowing where to turn or what to do went berserk. These were the Weathermen and their like: they took the grand cop-out, suicide.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum. Process and purpose are so welded to each other that it is impossible to mark where one leaves off and the other begins, or which is which. The very process of democratic participation is for the purpose of organization rather than to rid the alleys of dirt. Process is really purpose.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“Some say it’s no coincidence that the question mark is an inverted plow, breaking up the hard soil of old beliefs and preparing for the new growth.”
― Saul D. Alinsky , Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“This book will not
contain any panacea or dogma; I detest and fear dogma." ...
"This is not an ideological book except insofar as argument for change,"...
"ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth"...
" An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth. "...
" In the end he has one conviction — a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions.
I am not concerned if this faith in people is regarded as a prime truth and therefore a contradiction of what I have already written, for life is a story of contradictions. Believing in people, the radical has the job of organizing them so that they will have the power”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough. As”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“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, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“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, Rules for Radicals

“It hurt me to see the American army with drawn bayonets advancing on American boys and girls. But the answer I gave the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: “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 delegates.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“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, Rules for Radicals

“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, Rules for Radicals

“Mark Twain once put it, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“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, Rules for Radicals

“Whenever the word power is mentioned, somebody sooner or later will refer to the classical statement of Lord Acton and cite it as follows: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In fact the correct quotation is: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We can’t even read Acton’s statement accurately, our minds are so confused by our conditioning.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“The pursuit of happiness is never-ending; happiness lies in the pursuit. Confronted”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“The setting for the drama of change has never varied. Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. On”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of “the common good” and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“Most of us view the world not as it is but as we would like it to be. The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins—that is, until the late evening newscast, when suddenly we are plunged into the world as it is.* Political”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“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.” THE”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

“Revolution by the Have-Nots has a way of inducing a moral revelation among the Haves. Revolution”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals