Ralph Nader Quotes & Sayings

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference. — Ralph Nader

A citizenship of wholesale delegation and abdication to public and private power systems, such as prevails now, makes such periodic checks as elections little more than rituals. — Ralph Nader

Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way. — Ralph Nader

When do corporations begin to lose their credibility? They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought every social justice movement in this country. — Ralph Nader

We must strive to become good ancestors. — Ralph Nader

For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people. — Ralph Nader

Your best teacher is your last mistake. — Ralph Nader

Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism. — Ralph Nader

The corporations have become our government. They're not just influential. Department by department, you name it, they put their people in high government positions, they have 10,000 PACs and 35,000 lobbyists, so there's no more opening to be heard. — Ralph Nader

The various Social Security privatization schemes, full and partial, would cost both the 'social' - that is the public, cooperative, societal - element of the program and 'security' - the rock-solid income guarantee afforded by the system. It should be rejected. — Ralph Nader

The financial wealth of the top 1 percent of households in the U.S. exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent. — Ralph Nader

A wasteful defense is a weak defense. — Ralph Nader

This policy represents a massive injustice against Iraqi civilians, ... and it must be ended - not after Mr. Clinton leaves office, but now. — Ralph Nader

People are interested in family traditions, and I think a lot of families can benefit from some of the ways that my parents dealt with the challenges of raising four kids. — Ralph Nader

I don't like too much by-standing, on-looking, and spectator-behavior in people's lives. — Ralph Nader

John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships. — Ralph Nader

The flow from knowledge to action draws upon the complete person with his or her catalyst and synergistic potential. — Ralph Nader

The food industry, its trade associations, and research foundations, is well financed and highly organized to pressure the FDA. — Ralph Nader

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people. — Ralph Nader

If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists. — Ralph Nader

The reason that democracies always defeat dictatorships is because they're open to debate. We should never allow Washington to say, 'Shut up, get in line and wave the flag.' — Ralph Nader

The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns. — Ralph Nader

If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil. — Ralph Nader

This (George W. Bush's) administration is not sympathetic to corporations, it is indentured to corporations — Ralph Nader

Members of Congress are like the voters in one respect
they want to go with the winners. — Ralph Nader

Democrats have become very good at electing very bad Republicans — Ralph Nader

People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans. — Ralph Nader

You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective. — Ralph Nader

A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity. — Ralph Nader

The central challenge for any company, regardless of its size, is to keep doing a better job for its customers. — Ralph Nader

This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs. — Ralph Nader

I enjoy my work so much that I have to be pulled away from my work into leisure. — Ralph Nader

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding. — Ralph Nader

If you're not turned on by politics, politics will turn on you. — Ralph Nader

Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country ... But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers. — Ralph Nader

The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington and meets with the puppet in the White House. He then goes down Pennsylvania Avenue and meets with the puppets in Congress. The Israeli leader then 'brings back millions of dollars' in aid to Israel. — Ralph Nader

Nothing can stop the power of an informed citizenry when it is empowered, organized, and motivated. — Ralph Nader

Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers. — Ralph Nader

The whole story of human history is: The blasphemy of today is the commonplace of tomorrow. — Ralph Nader

Word of mouth is the most effective means of communication. — Ralph Nader

The corporations are worried about their reputational damage and a lot of the social media inflicts that, but it's hard to measure it. — Ralph Nader

I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does. — Ralph Nader

Let's not just look at it as taking votes away from Gore. Our support comes from a lot of people. — Ralph Nader

If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you. — Ralph Nader

The lesser of two evils, or the least of the worst, is not good enough for the American people anymore. — Ralph Nader

Everything will be solar in 30 years. — Ralph Nader

The liberal intelligentsia has allowed its party to become a captive of corporate interests. — Ralph Nader

How often do police accidentally shoot and kill bankers who are committing financial crimes, stealing homes, and plunging the nation into economic instability and recession? — Ralph Nader

Once you don't vote your ideals ... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy. — Ralph Nader

The clinical definition of "fascism" is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power. — Ralph Nader

Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity ... — Ralph Nader

To know and no to do is not to know. — Ralph Nader

It is a disturbing sign of the times when the two most transformative science technologies affecting the globe - biotechnology and nanotechnology - are governed by no external ethical or legal frameworks to protect public safety and other public interests, despite the fact that both industries have benefited from heavy taxpayer-funded government support. — Ralph Nader

I once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.' — Ralph Nader

Looking at virtual reality through computer screens, video game screens, and above all television screens is a denial of personality development. It's a denial of socialization, of expansion of vocabulary, of interaction with real human beings. — Ralph Nader

It's not a cost of doing business when the corporation executives go to jail, and that's why they fight so hard to make sure the prosecutors' budget are very limited and that the campaign cash-greased lawmakers keep defending them against being held accountable. — Ralph Nader

There's no better policy in a society then pursuing a health and safety of its people. — Ralph Nader

We have an underdeveloped democracy and overdeveloped plutocracy. — Ralph Nader

End perverse incentives that reward Wall Street speculators. — Ralph Nader

The only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals. — Ralph Nader

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse. — Ralph Nader

By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you. — Ralph Nader

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory. — Ralph Nader

The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers. — Ralph Nader

If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve. — Ralph Nader

The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights ... have pressured retailers on campus and off to publicly disclose the factory names and addresses. — Ralph Nader

The corporations don't like open courts of law, trials by jury. They want to privatize by pushing people into compulsory arbitration where they win most of the time and the whole process is pretty secret. — Ralph Nader

Gates's net wealth is greater than the combined net worth of the poorest 40% of Americans (112,000,000 people). — Ralph Nader

You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less. — Ralph Nader

Ford Motor Company's sluggish and piecemeal approach to its automotive responsibilities betrays motorists' safety. — Ralph Nader

I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations. — Ralph Nader

Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation. — Ralph Nader

Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it. — Ralph Nader

A society with more justice needs less charity. — Ralph Nader

For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull. — Ralph Nader

If, during the Second World War, the United States had retooled its factories for manufacturing bicycles instead of munitions, we'd be one of the healthiest, least oil-dependent, and most environmentally-sound constituents in the Nazi empire today. — Ralph Nader

If it is unpatriotic to tear down the flag, which is a symbol of the country, why isn't it more unpatriotic to desecrate the country itself-to pollute, despoil and ravage the air, land and sea. — Ralph Nader

When strangers start acting like neighbors ... communities are reinvigorated. — Ralph Nader

The progress of history is to take the impossible and turn it into the possible. — Ralph Nader

We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced. — Ralph Nader

Family values stand up to injustice and power outside the household. — Ralph Nader

When people ask, 'Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?' My answer is not an answer most people get: It's because their power developed from laws that enriched them. — Ralph Nader

The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history. — Ralph Nader

The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It's to create more leaders. — Ralph Nader

Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked. — Ralph Nader

Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret. — Ralph Nader

There is not enough self-consciousness about what a family can be, about what it can inherit from forbearers, and what new traditions it can start as a contributor to the community. — Ralph Nader

Families are incubators for citizen activists. — Ralph Nader

We've got to get rid of this discrimination, this chilling, this bigotry toward gays and lesbians that are reflected in literally hundreds and hundreds of statutes and regulations in this country. — Ralph Nader

Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials. — Ralph Nader

Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid. — Ralph Nader

It was an injured worker finding a lawyer on a contingent fee in a little town in Texas that blew the top off one of the greatest industrial disasters in American history. — Ralph Nader

This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out. — Ralph Nader

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done. — Ralph Nader

Whatever your issue is, whether it's racism or homophobia or policy issues or taxes or urban decay or health care, you're not going to go anywhere with it if we don't focus on the concentration of power. — Ralph Nader

If the people are the landlords of the public airwaves and the television and radio stations are the tenants, why don't the tenants pay rent? — Ralph Nader

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history. — Ralph Nader

The civil justice system is a backup system when the criminal justice system fails. — Ralph Nader

Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect. — Ralph Nader

Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value. — Ralph Nader