The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
Interpretation
Fear of potential danger can be worse than the actual danger itself.
This quote by Saul Alinsky highlights the idea that our fears and anxieties often exaggerate the realities we face. The anticipation of a threat can cause more distress than the actual confrontation with that threat, emphasizing the psychological nature of fear and how it can paralyze us more than the actual conditions we worry about.
In practice
When giving a motivational speech about overcoming fears.
Lest 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.
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.
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.
The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
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.
Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag.
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to choose the wisest thing and once you've chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
My life wasn't beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle.
I don't have any handicap. I am all handicap.
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
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