Saul Alinsky

“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.”

“Last guys don't finish nice.”

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

“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.'”

“The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.”

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

“'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.”

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

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

“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. You're just not there.”

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

“People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people.”

“Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.”

“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.”

“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”