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" The first step in community organization is community disorganization. "
Saul Alinsky
Community
Step
Organization
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" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Future
People
Change
" All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new. "
Saul Alinsky
Organization
Means
New
" Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day, and 8,000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, 'Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.' "
Saul Alinsky
Remember
Football
Time
" Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. "
Saul Alinsky
Want
Been
Divided
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Death
Faith
Power
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Control
Short
Road
" To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation... If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead. "
Saul Alinsky
Compromise
Key
Start
" The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. "
Saul Alinsky
Individual
Freedom
Greatest
" Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have. "
Saul Alinsky
You
Doing
Mean
" I've never joined any organization - not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. "
Saul Alinsky
Independence
Own
Organization
" No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough. "
Saul Alinsky
Sit
Enough
Hot
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
World
Believe
Start
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Opportunity
Truth Is
Truth
" If the ends don't justify the means, what does? "
Saul Alinsky
Does
Means
Ends
" If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community, I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out. "
Saul Alinsky
Hair
Community
Communication
" Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. "
Saul Alinsky
Freeze
Pick
Target
" The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded. "
Saul Alinsky
Utility
Wanted
Public
" A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. "
Saul Alinsky
Becomes
Drag
Long
" History is a relay of revolutions. "
Saul Alinsky
Relay
History
Revolutions
" Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. "
Saul Alinsky
Power
You
Always
" The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community. "
Saul Alinsky
Changing
Community
First
" We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it. "
Saul Alinsky
Darkest
Beautiful
Believe
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Heat
You
Simple
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Conflict
Movement
Only
" Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. "
Saul Alinsky
Man
Ridicule
Potent
" It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you are not even a failure. You're just not there. "
Saul Alinsky
Matter
People
You
" The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. "
Saul Alinsky
Than
Itself
More
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Community
White
Last
" Last guys don't finish nice. "
Saul Alinsky
Nice
Guys
Last
" 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. "
Saul Alinsky
Time
Life
Mother