A Quote by Saul Alinsky

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Saul Alinsky

Quote Topics

After Criticism Cruel Cut Direct Effective Faster Freeze Go Hurt Institutions Isolate Network Off People Personalized Pick Ridicule Support Sympathy Target Than Very Works

Quote Author

Saul Alinsky
American - Activist
January 30, 1909 - June 12, 1972

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Saul Alinsky

The thirteenth rule of radical tactics: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Saul Alinsky

Alinsky's 1971 book, 'Rules for Radicals,' is a favorite of the Obamas. Michele Obama quoted it at the Democratic Convention. One Alinsky tactic is to 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' That's what the White House did in targeting Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.

Karl Rove

I'm already a big enough target. I'm already more famous than most people should ever hope to be, and, as such, that has a direct effect on the size of the target that is on me. And you always do what you can to reduce the size of the target while not reducing your presence.

Rush Limbaugh

The question we should be asking is not why people are sometimes cruel, or even why a few people are usually cruel (all evidence suggests true sadists are an extremely small proportion of the population overall), but how we have come to create institutions that encourage such behavior and that suggest cruel people are in some ways admirable-or at least as deserving of sympathy as those they push around.

David Graeber

Forty-two thousand people is an attractive target for people who want to hurt us. And a ballpark that's about 6 feet, at one point, from the street is as big a target as any we can imagine.

Mike Quigley

The route to the target is more important than the target. We are going to go for the target, but we enjoy the route as well.

Ilan Ramon

Unfortunately I don't live by a Target now, so I just go to a regular Starbucks as opposed to a Starbucks nested inside a Target, which is my ideal situation. That works out for me. I like that white noise, those interruptions, and the people around me.

Diablo Cody

Universities are not places where police can come and arrest people. Let the children have a discourse as they want to. They will learn as they move on in life. But to target individuals and institutions is dangerous.

Kapil Sibal

The thought of bringing a cake into a dance music show is a bizarre one. The idea of rafting on top of people is just as bizarre as well. And I think whenever something bizarre comes into play, it immediately becomes an easy target. And for those reasons, I know that I have been the target of criticism.

Steve Aoki

Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.

Huey Newton

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

Thomas Sowell

If an adversary didn't target our power plants but they did target the core routers, the backbones that tie our internet connections together, entire parts of the United States could be cut off. That would have a tremendous impact on us as a society and it would have a policy backlash.

Edward Snowden

Where I get involved is that I have to sign off the money, yet when you have target one, two or three from your process I feel fine going after the No 1 target and, if it's not to be him, then number two or three.