Saul Alinsky Quotes

In the course of time, however, the insolence of the nobles … induced the people to rise…. The nobility, to save a portion of their power, were forced to yield a share of it to the people.

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.

Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.

Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited.

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.

Social change cannot come above the intellect, it comes about by people suffering. And the more people are related to that, the more they lose respect for an existing government. They will seek another direction. If there are too many people who seek a new direction, then the existing government calls upon the army and police to manage society – that is called fascism.

Charles Fox said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added that reformations are the best mode of preventing the necessity of either.

We must not forget that all great revolutions and reformations would look mean and meagre if examined in detail as they occurred at the time.

The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

'Revolution' does not necessarily involve sanguinary strife nor is there any place in it for individual vendetta. It is not the cult of the bomb and the pistol. By 'Revolution' we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change.

They ask me if I'm going to quit. I thought we were just getting started. We have a revolution to fight, a country to change.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.

It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.

I think it's very important for us to start to build a culture of resistance, because what we're doing isn't working, clearly.

I mean everybody knows there's something wrong with the world and if you read left wing politicians or deconstructionists or thoughtful historians they will offer thoughtful critiques of our situation. But the question is, you know, the Tolstoyian question; 'What is to be done?'

The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought.

Revolution means turning the wheel.

One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

We have seen in the past where leaders have not been open-minded or have not been flexible. That's why the people came out to the streets and shouted and chanted for more reforms and more freedoms.

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

I titled my book "Revolution." And that is exactly what it is. France is experiencing a time of transformation - in education, on the labor market and in the pensions system. We're talking about a cultural revolution.

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.

The Revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is always modeled on some image of the Lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden Age... All utopias are fed from the source of mythology; the social engineers' blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text.