The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
Saul AlinskyRead
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hold others accountable to their own standards and principles.
This quote by Saul Alinsky suggests that one should impose the same standards upon adversaries that they themselves advocate. By doing so, the enemy is forced to adhere to their own set of rules, which can expose hypocrisy and undermine their position.
Themes
EnemyRulesAccountabilityHypocrisyPower
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate, you could use this quote to highlight how one should hold opponents to their stated beliefs.
More from Saul Alinsky
All quotes βLest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.
Saul AlinskyRead
The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Saul AlinskyRead
The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
Saul AlinskyRead
The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
Saul AlinskyRead
An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
Saul AlinskyRead
Similar quotes
And at the time, it is funny how you can look at something and say, for example with my shoulder injury, when it first happened I said this is the worst thing that could happen to me. Why me, why now? Now I look back and say it was probably the best thing that happened to me
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Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.
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If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation. If you want me to speak for thirty minutes, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now.
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We are creatures of our thinking. We can talk ourselves into defeat or we can talk ourselves into victory.
Gordon B. HinckleyRead
The bold are helpless without cleverness.
EuripidesRead
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.
William ShakespeareRead