Quotessence
Home / Authors / Saul D. Alinsky

Saul D. Alinsky Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllActivismActivistsRadicalsOrganizersOrganizingDemocracyAmericaPeopleChangePowerAmericansAmerican DreamEducationOrganizationParticipationPower To The PeopleCommunityHistoryMoralityOrganizations

Famous Saul D. Alinsky Quotes

“What is the American radical? The radical is that unique person who actually believes what he says. He is that person to whom the common good is the greatest personal value. He is that person who genuinely and completely believes in mankind. The radical is so completely identified with mankind that he personally shares the pain, the injustices, and the sufferings of all his fellow men. For the radical the bell tolls unceasingly and every man’s struggle is his fight.”

AmericaHumanityEmpathyActivismCommon GoodAmericansActivistsRadicals
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The radical is not fooled by shibboleths and facades. He faces issues squarely and does not hide his cowardice behind the convenient cloak of rationalization. The radical refuses to be diverted by superficial problems. He is completely concerned with fundamental causes rather than current manifestations. He concentrates his attack on the heart of the issue.”

AmericaCausesHonestyActivismAuthenticityCause And EffectAmericansActivistsRadicals
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The American radical will fight privilege and power, whether it be inherited or acquired by any small group, whether it be political or financial or organized creed. He curses a caste system, aware that it exists despite all patriotic denials. He will fight conservatives, whether they are business or labor leaders. He will fight any concentration of power hostile to a broad, popular democracy, whether he finds it in financial circles or in politics. The radical recognizes that constant dissension and conflict is and has been the fire under the boiler of democracy.”

AmericaPowerPrivilegeActivismAmericansCaste SystemDissensionActivistsRadicalsConcentration Of Power
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“First, what do radicals want of the future? From a general point of view, liberals and radicals desire progress. In this they differ from conservatives, for while a conservative wishes to conserve the status quo, liberals ask for change and radicals fight for change. They desire a world rid of those destructive forces from which issue wars. They want to do away with economic injustice, insecurity, unequal opportunities, prejudice, bigotry, imperialism, all chauvinistic barriers of isolationism and other nationalistic neuroses. They want a world where life for man will be guided by a morality which is meaningful — and where the values of good and evil will be measured not in terms of money morals but social morals. For these and many other reasons they face the challenge of the future with anticipation and hope.”

AmericaProgressMoralityActivismAmericansConservativesLiberalsActivistsRadicals
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“Radicals want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur well for an ever expanding democratic way of life. Radicals want to see the established political rights or political freedom of the common man augmented by economic freedom. They believe that Lincoln’s statement that a nation cannot exist half-free and half-slave is applicable to the entire world and includes economic as well as political freedom. In short, radicals are convinced that the marriage of political rights to economic rights will produce a social morality in which the Golden Rule will replace the gold standard. Possessed of this sketch of a world to be, radicals find themselves adrift in the stormy sea of capitalism.”

PowerDemocracyCapitalismActivismLaissez FaireEconomic FreedomActivistsRadicalsLaissez Faire CapitalismMeans Of Production
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“What has been completely forgotten and cannot be overemphasized is that a People’s Organization carries within it two major functions. Both are equally important. One is the accepted understanding that organization will generate power that will be controlled and applied for the attainment of a program. The second is the realization that only through organization can a people’s program be developed. When people are brought together, or organized, they get to know each other’s point of view; they reach compromises on many of their differences, they learn that many opinions which they entertained solely as their own are shared by others, and they discover that many problems which they had thought of only as “their” problems are common to all. Out of all this social interplay emerges a common agreement, and that is the people’s program. Then the other function of organization becomes important: the use of power in order to fulfill the program.”

GroupsActivismActivistsOrganizingOrganizationsProgramsPeople S Organizations
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“There should not be too much concern with specifics or details of a people’s program. The program items are not too significant when one considers the enormous importance of getting people interested and participating in a democratic way. After all, the real democratic program is a democratically minded people--a healthy, active, participating, interested, self-confident people who, through their participation and interest, become informed, educated, and above all develop faith in themselves, their fellow men, and the future. The people themselves are the future. The people themselves will solve each problem that will arise out of a changing world. They will if they, the people, have the opportunity and power to make and enforce the decision instead of seeing that power vested in just a few. No clique, or caste, power group or benevolent administration can have the people’s interest at heart as much as the people themselves.”

PeoplePowerDemocracyOrganizationActivismParticipatingActivistsOrganizingOrganizersPower To The People
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The radical fights not for himself but for ideas, and ideas have a way of living on — they don’t kill as easily as man, and he knows that in the end the best ideas or wav of life will prevail. The radical’s affection for people is not lessened, nor is he hardened against them even when masses of them demonstrate a capacity for brutality, selfishness, hate, greed, avarice, and disloyalty. He is convinced that these attitudes and actions are the result of evil conditions. It is not the people who must be judged but the circumstances that made them that way. The radical’s desire to change society then becomes that much firmer. Each blow makes him a stronger radical.”

LoveIdeasHumanityChangeSocietyActivismSelflessnessActivistsRadicals
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“Those who have devoted themselves to the building of People’s Organization have become more and more convinced that one of the most significant educational approaches is not through argument, through lectures, through logic, or any other conventional common practices but through rationalization. These organizers feel, on the basis of their experiences not only in People’s Organizations but in their own general life, that most people in a great many instances act first and think afterward of the reasons why they acted. It seems as though a good part of our knowledge and what we may refer to as our own philosophy and attitudes are not things that we carefully and laboriously think through but are the rationalizations or self-justifications of acts we have already committed.”

ThinkingActingActivismRationalizationActivistsOrganizingOrganizersRationales
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“In a People’s Organization popular education is an exciting and dramatic process. Education instead of being distant and academic becomes a direct and intimate part of the personal lives, experiences, and activities of the people. Committee members find that they must become informed about the field of activities of their committee; they later discover that in order to be capable of carrying out their own activities they must know about all those other problems and activities that are related to the committee’s work. The committee that becomes interested in housing shortly finds itself involved in the fields of planning, health, race relations, and many other fields. Knowledge then becomes an arsenal of weapons in the battle against injustice and degradation. It is no longer learning for learning’s sake, but learning for a real reason, a purpose. It ceases to be a luxury or something known under the vague, refined name of culture and becomes as essential as money in the bank, good health, good housing, or regular employment.”

EducationLearningActivismActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizersPractical Knowledge
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The building of People’s Organizations is the creation of a set of realignments, new definitions of values and objectives, the breaking down of prejudices and barriers and all of the many other changes which flow out of a People’s Organization. The actual development of these social forces, coupled with the popular education, participation, and reorientation which is part of this whole process, inevitably means significant changes in the attitudes, the philosophies, and the programs of the constituent community agencies as well as the local people.”

ChangeActivismActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizationsOrganizersPeople S Organizations
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The American dream was wrought in the fire of the passionate hearts and minds of America’s radicals. It could never have been conceived in the cold, clammy tomb of conservativism. The American radical descends from those who begot, nurtured, fought, and suffered for every idea that moved men’s feet forward in the march of civilization — the radicals of the world. The hopes and aspirations of the radicals of the world found fruit in the American Revolution. Here in the New World man would find the new life, the new order; even our money carried this message, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM. The history of America is the story of America’s radicals. It is a saga of revolution, battle, words on paper setting hearts on fire, ferment and turmoil; it is the story of every rallying cry of the American people. It is the story of the American Revolution, of the public schools, of the battle for free land, of emancipation, of the unceasing struggle for the ever increasing liberation of mankind.”

HistoryActivismLiberationAmerican DreamAmerican HistoryAmerican RevolutionActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The job ahead is clear. Every conceivable effort must be made to rekindle the fire of democracy while a few embers yet glow in the gray ashes of the American dream. Once it goes out it may take generations before a new fire can be started. The fire, the energy, and the life of democracy is popular pressure. Democracy itself is a government constantly responding to continuous pressures of its people. The only hope for democracy is that more people and more groups will become articulate and exert pressure upon their government. It is short-sighted to attack the few major pressure groups in this country as “dangerous lobbyists” or “un-American,” for although these pressure blocs are seeking primarily to further their own interests, their organizing and bringing pressures to bear upon the government is participation and democratic activity which is infinitely more American, more democratic than the dry, dead rot of inactivity, of refusing to become involved in pressure groups. When we talk of democratic citizenship we talk and think in terms of an informed, active, participating, interested people — an interested and participating people is popular pressure!”

AmericaDemocracyPressureActivismAmerican DreamParticipationAmerican Democracy
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The universal premise of any people’s program is, "We the people will work out our own destiny.” This is the cardinal basis of democracy, and various specific issues are not too important in comparison with the main issue. Can there be a more fundamental, democratic program than a democratically minded and participating people? Can man envisage a more sublime program on earth than the people having faith in their fellow men and themselves? A program of co-operation instead of competition?”

DemocracyOrganizationActivismCooperationActivistsOrganizing
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“It is in an all-inclusive People’s Organization that people fight and think as people, as Americans, and not as businessmen, workers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, whites, or colored. A People’s Organization inevitably smashes all artificial barriers, sectarian interests, religious, nationality, and racial distinctions. It is made up of people, its program is a people’s program, and they think together, work together, fight together, hope together, achieve together, as people. The issue to be resolved is the creation of a world for the little people, a world where the millions instead of the few can live in dignity, peace, and security.”

ChangeCommunityProgressGroupsActivismActivistsOrganizingOrganizersPower To The PeopleCommunity Groups
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“Those who fear the building of People’s Organizations as a revolution also forget that it is an orderly development of participation, interest, and action on the part of the masses of people. It may be true that it is revolution, but it is orderly revolution. To reject orderly revolution is to be hemmed in by two hellish alternatives: disorderly, sudden, stormy, bloody revolution, or a further deterioration of the mass foundation of democracy to the point of inevitable dictatorship. The building of People’s Organizations is orderly revolution; it is the process of the people gradually but irrevocably taking their places as citizens of a democracy.”

DemocracyRevolutionActivismCitizenshipParticipationActivistsOrganizingOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with apathy, hopelessness, frustration, futility, and despair in the masses of people. It is this fear and complete hopelessness on the part of the masses which ultimately makes them relinquish all control over their lives and turn the power over to a dictator. Fascism does not have a chance of establishing itself over a people who are active, interested, participating, co-operating, informed, democratically minded, and who above all have learned through their experiences to have confidence in themselves and their fellow men. They have learned to become self-reliant, and this feeling of self-respect, respect for their fellow men, and confidence in the power of the people which comes out of a People’s Organization is actually the strongest barrier and safeguard against fascism which a democracy can possess.”

FearActivismFascismDictatorshipHopelessnessDictatorsActivists
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“To face the days ahead we must ask two questions: first, "Where are we?" and second, "Where do we go from here?" We Americans seem to have forgotten where we came from, we don't know where we are, and we fear where we may be going. We are a scene of frenetic fears, confusion, and madness. Scared New World. Life has become a catalogue of crises: the Urban Crisis, the Race Crisis, the Campus Crisis, the Poverty Crisis, the World Crisis, the Crisis of a Free and Open Society, and underneath it all our personal crises of whether to live or drop out. We are bombarded with so-called studies and reports on the consequences of urbanization, the population explosion, the changing character of our educational system, our values, our family life, our relationships with one another, or rather our lack of relationships, the ever increasing alienation of the individual from his society, his inability to act on those issues that are vital to him, his family, and his community.”

AmericaActivismModern LifeAmericansModern TimesActivistsDirectionsCrises
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“The tragedy of the young generation's "radicals" is that they dogmatically refuse to begin with the world as it is. But the only world we have is the world as it is, and we have to begin with that. Any social changer, throughout history, has always known that you begin from where you are. Change can only be effected through power, and power means organization. Organization can be built only around issues which are specific, immediate, and realizable.”

WorldChangePowerOrganizationActivismRealismActivistsRadicalsOrganizersStarting Where You Are
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“An organizer for a free society must be a creative person; his search for universals means the fulfillment of the highest goals of a creative mind--the finding of similarities in seemingly different or dissimilar things in our world. It is only in the discovery of these similarities that we have hope for even dimly understanding what we call life. Only with these similarities can we begin to construct natural laws of politics and detect an order in much of the chaos and carnage about us.”

OrderFreedomCreativityActivismOrganizingSimilaritiesOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image