Top 206 Quotes & Sayings by Ralph Nader - Page 2

Secrecy destroys accountability.

Things have gotten so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia.

Let it not be said by a future, forlorn generation that we wasted and lost our great potential because our despair was so deep we didn't even try, or because each of us thought someone else was worrying about our problems.

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.

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.

I think Hillary Clinton is a militarist. She is a political coward. The interesting thing about Hilary Clinton, like Bill Clinton dodging the draft, he never touched the Pentagon - she is in the same position.

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.

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

Democrats have become very good at electing very bad Republicans

We should tax things we don't like. We should tax pollution ... And we should lighten the taxes on things we do like, like honest labor, like food.

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

Families are incubators for citizen activists.

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.

Both [Donald] Trump and Hillary [Clinton] want bigger military budgets and Hillary supports President Obama's one trillion dollar expenditure to so-called upgrade nuclear weapons. P

All empires eventually destroy themselves. That's the record of history.

Jill Stein, is - and I'll make it in a personal way - over eighty percent of the people when I ran for President knew about me but then I realized that when I was running, eighty percent of the people didn't even know I was running.

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.

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.

We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.

In the meantime the big corporations are fleeing America for tax havens and places like Ireland, Luxembourg and the Grand Cayman Islands; the rich are finding more tax loopholes to expect; so when are the people going to basically roll up their sleeves and say, we've had enough, we're going to recapture Congress.

The 60th seed at Wimbledon gets a chance at Center Court. The 60th seed in the NCAA gets a chance to go to the Final Four. But the third seed [in presidential politics] is shut out.

One time when I was nine or ten years old, I came home from school...and my dad said to me, 'Well, Ralph, what did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?' So, I'm saying to myself, 'What's the difference between the two?'.

Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.

That's why I call the Senate the graveyard of democracy, because even when you have 58 senators, they can block it and block it and block it.

Ending police brutality and mass incarceration. There is a growing left-right support for criminal justice reform.

The concept of individual with a conscience is one whose highest allegiance is to his fellow man.

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.

The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create more leaders.

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.

Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.

We're trying to convey how much easier it is than most people think, especially young people, to turn the country around if they focus on the levers, if they focus on Congress, and state legislatures.

Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.

We have an underdeveloped democracy and overdeveloped plutocracy.

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory.

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

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

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.

Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations.

Congress is the most powerful branch. It can expand a progressive society, or it can block a progressive society.

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

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.

Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked

I hear people who are worried about climate change tell me, oh, Congress that's gridlock, that's not where the action is.

For anybody here who's very worried about domestic priorities, just consider we have created, with this war on terrorism, more fighters, more countries embroiled. They're learning new weapons. They're learning new techniques. They're coming here in social media. The lone wolf thing is expanding. And once that blows here, then forget about domestic priorities.

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

A wasteful defense is a weak defense.

Hillary Clinton's ready to pivot to Asia and provoke China. So are the Republicans. It's on domestic issues that there will be a gridlock.

Now unless you have billions of dollars, it's impossible to reach tens of millions of American people no matter how hard you campaign.

It's all these pundits, all these consultants, and the candidates, as if they're in a bubble leaving democracy off-limits.

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

The threats are coming to this country, which will, of course, increase the massive industry known as the anti-terrorism industry, and crush our civil liberties and civil rights, And it's devouring our priorities here in communities all over the country which are in such disrepair and are so neglected in terms of public works and public services.

I can say that you [Jill Sander] are my successor on the Green Party ticket so I know a little bit about what you're going through and I'm sure listeners are eager to hear you out.

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

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.

The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.

National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took . . . a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied.

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

Let's run through the various ways they're trying to marginalize the Green Party and even the Libertarian Party. One way is to keep you off the mass media.

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