Saul Alinsky Rules For Radicals Quotes

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

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

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.

Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

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;

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

In his Social Contract, Rousseau noted the obvious, that “Law is a very good thing for men with property and a very bad thing for men without property.

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.

People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others.

Let the liberal turn to the course of action, the course of all radicals, and the amused look vanishes from the face of society as it snarls, “That’s radical!” Society has good reason to fear the radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. 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.

The life of man upon earth is a warfare … — JOB 7:1

A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as aclimb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finall yreach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the "real" top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably. Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, "Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?" Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. "Because it's there." Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. Paradocically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heighs of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare - an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.

Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith....Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.

The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.

Do one of three things.One,go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves.Two,go psycho and start bombing-but this will only swing people to the right.Three,learn a lesson.Go home,organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegatepos

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

Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.

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

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice

If one wants to act, the dilemma is how and where; there is no "when?" with time running out, the time is obviously now.

Mark Twain once put it, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Power

Mendoza said to Tanner, “I am a brigand; I live by robbing the rich.” Tanner replied, “I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.” The

one’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s distance from the scene of conflict.

A bit of a blurred vision of a better world. Much of an organizer’s daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit. It is as though as an artist he is painting a tiny leaf. It is inevitable that sooner or later he will react with “What am I doing spending my whole life just painting one little leaf? The hell with it, I quit.” What keeps him going is a blurred vision of a great mural where other artists—organizers—are painting their bits, and each piece is essential to the total.

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

The sit-down strikers began to worry about the illegality of their action and the why and wherefore, and it was then the chief of all C.I.O. organizers, Lewis, gave them their rationale. He thundered, 'The right to a man's job transcends the right of private property! The C.I.O. stands squarely behind these sit-downs!' The sit-down strikers at GM cheered.

All of life is partisan. There is no dispassionate objectivity. The revolutionary ideology is not confined to a specific limited formula. It is a series of general principles, rooted in Lincoln’s May 19, 1856, statement: “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

The real action is in the enemy's reaction.

A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises—which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum.

The essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was “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.” And it was.

The opposition’s means, used against us, are always immoral and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human values. George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman, pointed out the variations in ethical definitions by virtue of where you stand. Mendoza said to Tanner, “I am a brigand; I live by robbing the rich.” Tanner replied, “I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.” The

What the present generation wants is what all generations have always wanted—a meaning, a sense of what the world and life are—a chance to strive for some sort of order.

In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.

There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. The

There is a feeling of death hanging over the nation. Today

Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego. CONFLICT

The function of an organizer is to raise questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern.

Citizen participation is the animating spirit and force in a society predicated on voluntarism. We

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. I

As Mark Twain once put it, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

These are the days when man has his hands on the sublime while he is up to his hips in the muck of madness.

The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the Haves is a ritualistic justification of their possessions.

To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non controversial sauces, is a waste of time. They cannot on deliberately will not understand what we are discussing here.

History is made up of "moral" judgments based on politics. We condemned Lenin's acceptance of money from the Germans in 1917 but were discreetly silent while our Colonel William B. Thompson in the same year contributed a million dollars to the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia. As allies of the Soviets in World War II we praised and cheered communist guerrilla tactics when the Russians used them against the Nazis during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union; we denounce the same tactics when they are used by communist forces in different parts of the world against us. The opposition's means, used against us, are always immoral and our means are always ethical and rooted in the highest of human values.

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.

Today everything is so complex as to be incomprehensible. What sense does it make for men to walk on the moon while other men are waiting on welfare lines, or in Vietnam killing and dying for a corrupt dictatorship in the name of freedom?

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.

The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with the ribbons of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales. From

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization.

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.

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 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

We are not here concerned with people who profess the democratic faith but yearn for the dark security of dependency where they can be spared the burden of decisions. Reluctant to grow up, or incapable of doing so, they want to remain children and be cared for by others. Those who can, should be encouraged to grow; for the others, the fault lies not in the system but in themselves.

Why stroke the hypersensitive ears of our modern weaklings? Why yield even a single step … to the Tartuffery of words? For us psychologists that would involve a Tartuffery of action … For a psychologist today shows his good taste (others may say his integrity) in this, if in anything, that he resists the shamefully moralized manner of speaking which makes all modern judgments about men and things slimy. We

They have seen the almost unbelievable idiocy of our political leadership—in the past political leaders, ranging from the mayors to governors to the White House, were regarded with respect and almost reverence; today they are viewed with contempt. This negativism now extends to all institutions, from the police and the courts to “the system” itself. We are living in a world of mass media which daily exposes society’s innate hypocrisy, its contradictions and the apparent failure of almost every facet of our social and political life.

Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, “Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?” Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. “Because it’s there.” Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety.

The great American dream that reached out to the stars has been lost to the stripes. We have forgotten where we came from, we don’t know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. Afraid, we turn from the glorious adventure of the pursuit of happiness to a pursuit of an illusionary security in an ordered, stratified, striped society. Our way of life is symbolized to the world by the stripes of military force. At home we have made a mockery of being our brother’s keeper by being his jail keeper. When Americans can no longer see the stars, the times are tragic. We must believe that it is the darkness before the dawn of a beautiful new world; we will see it when we believe it.

To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis—will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means. But if one lacks the luxury of a choice and is possessed of only one means, then the ethical question will never arise; automatically the lone means becomes endowed with a moral spirit. Its defense lies in the cry, “What else could I do?” Inversely, the secure position in which one possesses the choice of a number of effective and powerful means is always accompanied by that ethical concern and serenity of conscience so admirably described by Mark Twain as “The calm confidence of a Christian holding four aces.” To

10. What books would you recommend to an aspiring entrepreneur? Some quick favorites: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism by Matt Mason Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices by Christopher Locke

August 8th START WITH WHERE THE WORLD IS “Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that’s in your power. Don’t look around to see if people will know about it. Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic, but be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.29.(4) Have you ever heard the expression “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”? The idea is not to settle or compromise your standards, but rather not to become trapped by idealism. The community organizer Saul Alinsky opens his book Rules for Radicals with a pragmatic but inspiring articulation of that idea: “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.” There is plenty that you could do right now, today, that would make the world a better place. There are plenty of small steps that, were you to take them, would help move things forward. Don’t excuse yourself from doing them because the conditions aren’t right or because a better opportunity might come along soon. Do what you can, now. And when you’ve done it, keep it in perspective, don’t overblow the results. Shun both ego and excuse, before and after.

Obama’s formative background is the left-wing fever swamp of Chicago “community organizing,” a gussied-up term for systematic rabble-rousing that has now become acceptable enough to put on a résumé. The pursuit of raw power is the gospel according to the seminal organizer, Saul Alinsky—if we may use “gospel” in connection with an atheist whose most famous book, Rules for Radicals, opens with an ode to Lucifer for winning his own kingdom by rebelling against the establishment.

Democracy is not an end; it is the best political means available toward the achievement of these values.

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

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

All effective actions require the passport of morality.

Others sick with guilt and not knowing where to turn or what to do went berserk. These were the Weathermen and their like: they took the grand cop-out, suicide.

Those who, for whatever combination of reasons, encourage the opposite of reformation, become the unwitting allies of the far political right. Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right.

The standards of judgement must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be.

Some say it’s no coincidence that the question mark is an inverted plow, breaking up the hard soil of old beliefs and preparing for the new growth.

Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (1971) now appears to be the playbook for partisans across the political spectrum: in place of reasoned debate, we have an unremitting stream of smears and ad hominem abuse, which when unsuccessful are followed up by attempts to deplatform adversaries or harm them in their personal lives or careers. This is healthy for no-one.

in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.

Hilary wrote her college thesis on Saul Alinsky, the leftist extremist who dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, and adored his subversive tactics to further the Big Government agenda.

This book will not contain any panacea or dogma; I detest and fear dogma." ... "This is not an ideological book except insofar as argument for change,"... "ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth"... " An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth. "... " In the end he has one conviction — a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions. I am not concerned if this faith in people is regarded as a prime truth and therefore a contradiction of what I have already written, for life is a story of contradictions. Believing in people, the radical has the job of organizing them so that they will have the power

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

Mark Twain once put it, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference

Not only does a single- or even a dual-issue organization condemn you to a small organization, it is axiomatic that a single-issue organization won’t last. An organization needs action as an individual needs oxygen. With only one or two issues there will certainly be a lapse of action, and then comes death. Multiple issues mean constant action and life. An

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts—one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 per cent difference—and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and yet stay together. But this is what the organizer must do. Ego

The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends... are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land.

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society.

The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions.

Thus the greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. From

Whenever the word power is mentioned, somebody sooner or later will refer to the classical statement of Lord Acton and cite it as follows: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In fact the correct quotation is: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We can’t even read Acton’s statement accurately, our minds are so confused by our conditioning.

Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation.

What is the alternative to working “inside” the system? A mess of rhetorical garbage about “Burn the system down!” Yippie yells of “Do it!” or “Do your thing.” What else? Bombs? Sniping? Silence when police are killed and screams of “murdering fascist pigs” when others are killed? Attacking and baiting the police? Public suicide? “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun!” is an absurd rallying cry when the other side has all the guns.

Revolution by the Have-Nots has a way of inducing a moral revelation among the Haves. Revolution

There is no dispassionate objectivity. The revolutionary ideology is not confined to a specific limited formula. It is a series of general principles, rooted in Lincoln’s May 19, 1856, statement: “Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.” THE

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.

This is not an ideological book except insofar as argument for change, rather than for the status quo, can be called an ideology; different people, in different places, in different situations and different times will construct their own solutions and symbols of salvation for those times.

The setting for the drama of change has never varied. Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. On

The pursuit of happiness is never-ending; happiness lies in the pursuit. Confronted

Most of us view the world not as it is but as we would like it to be. The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins—that is, until the late evening newscast, when suddenly we are plunged into the world as it is.* Political

WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. 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. In

It hurt me to see the American army with drawn bayonets advancing on American boys and girls. But the answer I gave the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: “Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.

Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum. Process and purpose are so welded to each other that it is impossible to mark where one leaves off and the other begins, or which is which. The very process of democratic participation is for the purpose of organization rather than to rid the alleys of dirt. Process is really purpose.

Between the Haves and Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores--the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect the little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. They could be described as social, economic, and political schizoids. Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change and yet not risk losing the little they have. They insist on a minimum of three aces before playing a hand in the poker game of revolution. Thermopolitically they are tepid and rooted in inertia. Today in Western society and particularly in the United States they comprise the majority of our population.

The rough category "middle class" can be broken down into three groups: lower middle class, with incomes from $6,000 to $11,000; middle middle class, $12,000 to $20,000; and upper middle class, $20,000 to $35,000.

Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people.