Ralph Nader Quotes

The Function of Leadership is to produce more Leaders, Not more Followers.

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.

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.

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

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.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

We must strive to become good ancestors.

No presidential candidate should visit Las Vegas without condemning organized gambling.

If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.

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

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

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

Arbitration is private. It doesn't have the tools to dig into the corporate files. It's usually controlled by arbitrators who want repeat business from corporations not from the injured person.

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

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

Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.

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

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

Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally. . . . Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Let's get that story out. . . . Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders.

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.'

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

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

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

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

Power has to be insecure to be responsive.

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.

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

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

We have a Democratic Party that cannot defend the American people from the worst Republican Party in history because it's a Democratic Party of war and Wall Street.

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.

When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated.

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

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

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

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.

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

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.'

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

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

National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

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.

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

A wasteful defense is a weak defense.

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

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

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

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

I always say there's no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling.

People have got to show up, showing up at meetings, rallies, marches, City Council, courtrooms. You've got to show up.