The fourth rule is: "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. Saul Alinsky More Quotes by Saul Alinsky More Quotes From Saul Alinsky The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means. Saul Alinsky rules-for-radicals use mean 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. Saul Alinsky grief believe death Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together. Saul Alinsky rules-for-radicals humanist organization Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt. Saul Alinsky civilization people religion Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. Saul Alinsky rules-for-radicals book enemy Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end. Saul Alinsky laughter passion adventure Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives - agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate. Saul Alinsky passion bridges men The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. Saul Alinsky ethics ends mean An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations. Saul Alinsky different doe reality The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space. Saul Alinsky breathing space heart No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation. Saul Alinsky negotiation issues firsts Spouting quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclearpowered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport. Saul Alinsky airports politics political The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means. Saul Alinsky ethics war mean It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral. Saul Alinsky angel men enemy Human beings do not like to look squarely into the face of tragedy. Gloom is unpopular. Saul Alinsky tragedy faces looks A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. Saul Alinsky tactics enjoy people A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises. Saul Alinsky ongoing compromise society History is a relay of revolutions. Saul Alinsky relays revolution 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 Alinsky greed law world A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution Saul Alinsky self mean past
