The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action'; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind.

Saul Alinsky

Categorized in : Doe Decision Luxury

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.

Saul Alinsky

despair change social

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Saul Alinsky

cutting hurt people

They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.

Saul Alinsky

government gun peace

Control healthcare and you control the people

Saul Alinsky

healthcare rules-for-radicals people

True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.

Saul Alinsky

radicalism cutting hair

Never let a crisis go to waste

Saul Alinsky

crisis waste

A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism.

Saul Alinsky

political evil order

The very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer.

Saul Alinsky

devil kingdoms men

In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems.

Saul Alinsky

issues jobs firsts

Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is. ... Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority.

Saul Alinsky

organization class war

The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree.

Saul Alinsky

issues angel men

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

Saul Alinsky

weapons impossible men

In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.

Saul Alinsky

fighting land blow

If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.

Saul Alinsky

rules-for-radicals enough negative

If people don't think they have the power to solve their problems, they won't even think about how to solve them.

Saul Alinsky

problem people thinking

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

christian book enemy

The only nonpartisan people are those who are dead.

Saul Alinsky

people

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

Saul Alinsky

essentials weapons successful

Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.

Saul Alinsky

legends men firsts

From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.

Saul Alinsky

army dream sleep