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Saul Alinsky Biography

Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals (1971).

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Saul Alinsky Quotes

I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism…The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.

Accept, Independence, Nazi, Perpetrated, Political, Religious

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.

Adventure, Bridges, Laughter, Life, Passion

Last guys don't finish nice.

Enemy, Finish, Guy, Guys, Nice

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.

Fear, Human, Love Is, Mean, Power, Respect

Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.

Alive, Democracy, Dictatorship, Life, Living

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.

Begins, Caused, Evil, Order, Political

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. )

Cutting, Freeze, Hurt, People, Polarize

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara. . . are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.

Airports, Castro, Computerized, Mao, Political, Politics

It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.

Facts, Fountainhead, Rules For Radicals, Fountainheads, Power, Fear

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

Faces, Like, Look, Looks, Tragedy, Unpopular

The thirteenth rule of radical tactics: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Pick, Radical, Rule, Tactics, Target

Do you like people? Most people claim that they like people with, of course, a "few exceptions. " When the exceptions are added together it becomes clear that they include a vast majority of the people. It becomes equally clear that most people like just a few people, their kind of people, and either do not actively care for or actively dislike most of the "other" people.

Course, Include, Majority, People, Together

A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

Enjoy, Good, People, Tactic, Tactics

Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea.

Asking, Diarrhea, Problem, Sociologist

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.

Destiny, Fixed, Opportunity, People, Reach

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.

Adventure, Challenges, Life, People, Security, Vast

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

Angel, Angels, Devil, Devils, Side, Sides

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.

Becomes, Father, Hero, Mean, Patriotic, Seventh

History is a relay of revolutions.

History, Relay, Relays, Revolution, Revolutions

The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.

Achieve, Desired, Effective, Mean, Results

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Saul Alinsky Biography

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