Saul Alinsky Quotes

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

People are afraid of detail and complexity.

Some are young people who don't know who they are, what they can be or even want to be. They are afraid, but they don't know of what. They are angry, but they don't know at whom. They are rejected and they don't know why. All they want is to be somebody.

Truly living required risk.

I'm losing the definition now of politics. I sort of don't know what that is anymore. People say politically correct, I don't know what that means. I know what they think they mean.

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to kneel or buy stamps from him or what.

Instant success are seldom instant and if you talk to the people behind these successes, you'll find out that they came after months of fear, uncertainty and confusion along with a flagrant lack of adoption.

As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.

If you don't know what you're being asked to do, make sure you clarify. I think people in every business are afraid to ask questions.

I want to be able to challenge myself. And do things that are away from what I usually do. Stand-up is safe for me. I can do stand-up in front of twenty-five thousand people, and I'm like, "I know how to do this. This is what I do." I want to be a little scared.

His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.

Where are people going? I wonder what they hope will happen and what they are afraid of? For me it's the same thing and has to do with being loved.

People were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford people just aggressively pretended nothing had happened.

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.

People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

If you look back in history, as the barbarians were invading the gates of Rome, people were consulting fortunetellers and worrying about the end of the world and all sorts of other apocalyptic notions. When the tsars were finally overthrown, they were all reading tarot cards even as the revolutionaries were banging at the gates.

For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier - and that's a fact.

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now

When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.