17 quotes
The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea.
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event you are not even a failure. You're just not there.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
[T]he fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives—agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971)
Power goes to two poles: to those who've got money and those who've got people.
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