Saul Alinsky Quotes

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder When hunger ruled. I came among men in a time of uprising And I revolted with them.

The "have nots" outnumber the "haves." No wonder the ruling class of every country grows more and more alarmed.

The character of Robin Hood stands for the deep anger of the dispossessed against the ruling classes.

If too many people feel excluded from the system and cannot access its benefits, they will ultimately rebel against it.

The powerful don't make revolutions

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

The day of reckoning came, and that day was the Terror. The heirs of those who toiled made their account with the heirs of those who played.

The revolution... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Revolutions break out when opposite parties, the rich and the poor, are equally balanced, and there is little or nothing between them.

For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes In the class war, despairing When there was only injustice and no resistance

This is a hard job to do …. We represent the underdog, and that makes the top dogs angry.

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

A repressed minority is an angry one, which may ultimately threaten the government's stability.

You [a country] cannot be rich, successful and powerful and still be loved, particularly be those who have little success, wealth or power.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with the present state of things, will always exist in this world.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.