Political Activists

"I’d say, “That’s it, Charlie, you’re going to be by yourself for a hundred years.”"

"When you’ve parked the second car in the garage, and installed the hot tub, and skied in Colorado, and wind-surfed in the Caribbean, when you’ve had your first love affair and your second and your third, the question will remain, where does the dream end for me?"

"I am not for separatism from the United States. My motto is justice but not independence from or revolution against the United States."

"There is a powerful expression of our yearning. But now that we have the revolutionary spirit, we must not lose sight of the brotherhood awareness. Temper the revolutionary spirit. Culture identification is needed, but we must not let it lead us to hatred. We can become intoxicated and lose sight of our real goal to fully participate in the political system of the United States."

"Life's greatest lessons have come to me so late … that a country can have political independence while its people are not free."

"The roads that we are using today were all built by Smith. All the infrastructure is Smith’s. We never suffered the way we are suffering now because Smith took care of the economy that supported all people and they had enough to eat. When he left power the [British] pound was on a par with the Zimbabwean dollar, but President Mugabe has killed all that."

"Ian Smith lived an exemplary family life and in private was a down-to-earth, modest man. Ian Smith was not corrupt nor was he a megalomaniac. However whilst Ian Smith acted in what he thought were the best interests of then Rhodesia he made some disastrous political decisions as Prime Minister which directly contributed to the trauma that Zimbabwe is suffering from today... The policies of his Rhodesia Front party radicalized black nationalists and directly spawned the violent and fascist rule of Zanu PF."

"Smith had many fine qualities as a political leader. However, he was very much a creature of his background. His life revolved around the cricket team, the whites only school, the RAF, the country club and the company of other gentleman farmers. He never escaped from this or saw beyond it."

"If Smith was a black man, I would say that he was the best Prime Minister that Zimbabwe ever had."

"Ian Smith was a formidable opponent, but he lacked any vision. We offered him much better terms at the Fearless and Tiger talks than anything he is going to get now. He held out too long, for too much, and is going to end up with nothing."

"If I absolutely had to choose, I would take Mugabe in preference to Smith, though. I couldn't stand Smith. I thought he was a man who saw every tree in the wood but couldn't see the wood... He was a really stupid man, Smith; a bigoted, stupid man."

"Smith was being realistic-if you give people something before they are ready [for it] they are going to mess it up. And that has happened. If he had had the opportunity to work with the people [and] help bring them up, Zimbabwe would be a better place now. Smith did make it better during his government. There is no reason why he could not do that if he had been allowed to go on."

"Smith was misunderstood in a lot of ways. He is an African [and] understands the African mentality. It wasn't his problem what happened in Rhodesia. He came in [to power] in 1965 after Winston Field, so he was along the system that had been created. If you look at the development of Rhodesia, Smith contributed enormously [to] that. It didn't only benefit the whites, it benefited the blacks."

"In the interests of our people, and of other people in this part of the world, let's work together. Why do we have to exclude people because of their colour, whether they are white, brown, yellow or black? Let's accept that we are all a part of Africa, all part of the world. Let's all work together. And the more we can get people to accept that philosophy, the greater the hope for the whole world."

"Africa is a continent which is subject to a great deal of friction and argument and change; that's [true] of the world generally but more so Africa than anywhere else. So because of that we live in hope, we think that the people in the end will say "We've had enough"."

"So [things have] gradually and gradually [gotten] worse and worse until the country is absolutely on the rocks now, and the people are suffering. And this is our hope, because so many people are suffering, have been persecuted and have been told "Get into line, or else", and they know what 'or else' means."

"To begin with, things [after Independence in 1980] went well because [Robert] Mugabe was no fool. He realised [that] it was important to maintain the economy and keep the country expanding. And in any case he was committed to do that by the Lancaster House Agreement which said that there could be no change in [the existing status] for at least seven years unless [he] could get 100% support [from] all the people. In no ways would he have been able to get the support of the white members of Parliament, and also the Matabeles. So we were satisfied that what we were doing was in keeping with the traditions and culture and what was expected of us, and Mugabe used to thank me for coming to see him, [giving] him the benefit of my advice and [telling] him what the white people were thinking. But he only did this for a while because he inherited the best economy in Africa. It was viable. And after two years he quickly changed his mind because he had a lot of money available. He had his [own] commanders in control because he had removed the white commanders who would have taken action against him if he had defied the Lancaster House Agreement before the seven-year [period]. He removed our commanders and put his commanders in so that he knew that he could defy this. And so he breached the Lancaster House Agreement."

"What we believed in was responsible majority rule as opposed to irresponsible majority rule, and I stand by that. I think it's important that before you give a person a [right to] vote you ensure that his roots go down [and] that he's part of the whole structure of the country. So I stand by what I've said, and I think we can substantiate the fact that the things we did were to the benefit of the black people of our country more so than anybody else. And I challenge anybody to disagree with that."

"[Robert Mugabe] was a very clever bloke and he worked with me for as long as he thought it was going to help him. Once again, it was just to keep himself in power. I give that answer to all questions about Mugabe because that is all there is to it. Everything he has ever done is about keeping himself in power: Dictators and fascists all over the world think like that."

"We had the highest standard of health and education and housing for our black people than any other country on the African continent. That was what Rhodesians did. I wonder if we shouldn't be given credit for doing that."

"To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilisation to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing."

"Pushing people forward simply because of their colour, irrespective of merit, would be most unfortunate and would of course lead to disaster. It would mean that Rhodesia would then develop into a kind of banana republic where the country would in no time be bankrupt."

"I am satisfied it has strengthened my hand tremendously. Nobody but a fool would disregard the kind of result we witnessed today."

"I would be dishonest if I did not state quite clearly that the proposals which were put to us in Pretoria do not represent what in our view would be the best solution to Rhodesia's problems."

"All the soul of man is resolution, which in valiant men falters never, until their last breath."

"Let me say it again. I don't believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia—not in a thousand years. I repeat that I believe in blacks and whites working together. If one day it is white and the next day it is black, I believe we have failed and it will be a disaster for Rhodesia."

"Today is not such a tremendous day for us Rhodesians. We made our decision to become a Republic quite a long while ago, and this is simply the process of formalising it. Our Independence Day is the great day. Rhodesia did not want to seize independence from Britain. It was forced upon us."

"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."

"The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical."

"The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father."

"The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means."

"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."

"The end is what you want and the means is how you get it."

"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict."

"The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us our hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space."

"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."

"The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life."

"The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible."

"No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough."

"Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives—agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate."

"Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear the most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

"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 first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer."

"Asking a sociologist to solve a problem is like prescribing an enema for diarrhea."

"RYAN LIZZA: There’s a famous story. Whenever Alinsky would have a new student coming to organize, he would ask them, why do you want to be an organizer, and they would always say, well, I want to help others, you know, I want to devote my life to doing good. And he would scream back at them, no, you want to organize for power. Obama’s organizing buddy shared with me a manual that was very similar to the one that Obama used to train as an organizer, and in it, it said, we are not virtuous by not wanting power. We are really cowards for not wanting power because power is good and powerlessness is evil."

"With respect for Saul Alinsky, who wrote Rules for Radicals, though as Alinsky himself said over and over, there are no rules; radicalism demands extraordinary flexibility and agility. Radicals have to improvise, not kneejerk."

"Power goes to two poles: to those who've got money and those who've got people."

"I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."

"The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

"[T]he fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

"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."