A biography for Saul Alinskyhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
“History is a relay of revolutions.”
“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.”
“No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.”
“I've never joined any organization - not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much.”
“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”
“If the ends don't justify the means, what does?”
“First rule of change is controversy. You can't get away from it for the simple reason all issues are controversial. Change means movement, and movement means friction, and friction means heat, and heat means controversy.”
“There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man's faith in himself and in his power to direct his future.”
“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.'”
“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.”
“The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.”
“The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”
“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.”