Ralph Nader Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

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

Ralph Nader
The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders.

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

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
This administration is not sympathetic to corporations, it is indentured to corporations.

Ralph Nader
Unlike members of Congress, Big Business knew what the WTO agreements contained. That's because corporate lobbyists helped draft them.

Ralph Nader
... the Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals... they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse.

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
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
There is a two-tier economy where the top 10% is doing quite well, the top 1% spectacularly. But the top 1% of the richest people in this country have financial wealth equal to the combined 95% of the American people. That's a very unhealthy inequality which is even troubling Alan Greenspan.

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

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Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked

Ralph Nader
... organized labor... rushes to support the party without demanding a turn away from corporatism toward workers' needs. This is the logic of the lesser of two evils. It tethers labor to a relentless slide deeper into the corporate power pits year after year.

Ralph Nader
Like knowing hostages, the AFL-CIO and its unions march in tandem to endorse the Democratic presidential nominees early in the primary season. They have given up their capacity for negotiation, so frightened are they of the Republicans. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file workers suffer their dwindling status in silence.

Ralph Nader
The Socratic method is a game at which only one (the professor) can play.

Ralph Nader
... the Democratic and Republican parties, two apparently distinct political entities feeding at the same corporate trough.

Ralph Nader
The tired whine of 'But the Republicans are worse' will fall flat as more young Americans take charge of their future and move, with their reenergized elders, toward the Green Party and parallel civic and political movements.

Ralph Nader
Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust.

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 1963 Corvair, which has some remarkable characteristics. It's one of the few cars I know that can do the bossa nova on dry pavement and the watusi on wet.

Ralph Nader