Saul Alinsky Quotes

That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

I don't want to live in a fantasy world.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

You can cooperate and not compromise your core values. But I'm a realist with the philosophy that sometimes you've got to take bites out of the apple instead of the whole apple.

I think we ought to take the world as it is and not as we would like to have it.

My only definition is that I am a pragmatist.

Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

It is best to live however one can be.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

I am willing ... when I cannot get all I wish, to take what I can get.

I like to be an optimist, but I like to be a realist, too.

I'm trying to just take things as they come, not to try to expect too much, just do my job and hope things work out.

You got to keep your feet on the ground, and it is what it is.

I'm really pragmatic. That's my reality.

People have to be realistic, or the dream just drags on.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.

The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.

The most popular persons are those who take the world as it is who find the least fault.

When it comes to men, deal with them as they are, not how you’d like them to be.

I deal with what "is," not with what I wish was or not with what was or used to be.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.