Politics Quotes by Saul Alinsky

The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

— Saul Alinsky

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

— Saul Alinsky

I've never joined any organization - not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much.

— Saul Alinsky

Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his…

— Saul Alinsky

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…

— Saul Alinsky

Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization.…

— Saul Alinsky

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people…

— Saul Alinsky

The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

— Saul Alinsky

Power just goes to two poles — to those who've got money, and those who've got people.

— Saul Alinsky

The establishment can accept being screwed, but not being laughed at

— Saul Alinsky

To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation... If you start with nothing,…

— Saul Alinsky

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

— Saul Alinsky

The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not…

— Saul Alinsky

Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact…

— Saul Alinsky

One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.

— Saul Alinsky