All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.
My only fixed truth is a belief in people: a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they'll generally reach the right decisions.
The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.'
History is a relay of revolutions.
I've never joined any organization - not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much.
To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation... If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you're 30 percent ahead.
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.
Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events.
Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day, and 8,000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, 'Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.'
There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man's faith in himself and in his power to direct his future.
Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.
The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded.
