Saul Alinsky

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

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.

Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

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.

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

'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.

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.

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.

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.

The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.'

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

If the ends don't justify the means, what does?

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

Last guys don't finish nice.

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.

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.

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.

No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

Human beings do not like to look squarely into the face of tragedy. Gloom is unpopular.

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

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.

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

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.

No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.

History is a relay of revolutions.

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

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.

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.

Control healthcare and you control the people.

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have.

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.