Start with where the world is

Do now what nature demands of you. Get right to it if that's in your power. Don't look around to see if people will know about it. Don't await the perfection of Plato's Republic, but be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome as a small thing.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.29.(4)

As an  organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be -- it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.

-- Saul Alinksy in Rules for Radicals

* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman