# Quote — Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

> In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons—afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.

- Author: [Saul Alinsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky.md)
- Book: [Rules for Radicals](https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky/rules-for-radicals.md)
- Page: 13
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky#Rules_for_Radicals:_A_Practical_Primer_for_Realistic_Radicals_(1971)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky/rules-for-radicals/in-this-world

## More from this book

> Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.

p. 113 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky/rules-for-radicals/change-comes-from.md)

> 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.

p. 24 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky/rules-for-radicals/to-say-that.md)

> 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.

p. 128 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/saul-alinsky/rules-for-radicals/the-fourth-rule.md)