Ralph Nader Quotes

“The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.”

— Ralph Nader

“A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”

— Ralph Nader

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.”

— 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

“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.”

— Ralph Nader

A society with more justice needs less charity.

— Ralph Nader

“Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity ...”

— Ralph Nader

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

— 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

“LOST: 60 SECONDS
DON'T BOTHER LOOKING FOR THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE GONE FOREVER”

— 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

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

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

— Ralph Nader

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

— Ralph Nader

“If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists.”

— Ralph Nader

This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.

— Ralph Nader

“The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders.”

— Ralph Nader

“It is fascinating to watch legislators turn away from their usual corporate grips when they hear the growing thunder of the people.”

— Ralph Nader

“Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.”

— Ralph Nader

“Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.”

— Ralph Nader

Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked.

— Ralph Nader

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

— Ralph Nader

“The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history.”

— Ralph Nader

“Power has to be insecure to be responsive.”

— Ralph Nader

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

— 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

“Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.”

— 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

“Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines.”

— 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

“National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.”

— Ralph Nader

“There's no better policy in a society then pursuing a health and safety of its people.”

— 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

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

“The world is shaped by different people with certain personalities that come out of different upbringings.”

— Ralph Nader

Everything will be solar in 30 years.

— Ralph Nader

“Ninety-seven percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men, and what they do radiates all the way down into poor areas and cities around our country. Like predatory lending and misallocation of municipal services. These guys get municipal service, poor areas don't. So they run the economy into the ground, and who suffers the most? The poor pay more and they die earlier.”

— Ralph Nader

“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.”

— Ralph Nader

“The progress of history is to take the impossible and turn it into the possible.”

— Ralph Nader

“We are practicing what we preach so that we may preach what we practice.”

— Ralph Nader

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

— Ralph Nader

“Families are incubators for citizen activists.”

— 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

“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

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

— 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

“Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations.”

— Ralph Nader

“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.”

— Ralph Nader

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

— 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