Ralph Nader
Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.Collection: Business
A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.Collection: Society
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.Collection: Leadership
I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations.Collection: Business
Turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you.Collection: Politics
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.'Collection: Dad
Your best teacher is your last mistake.Collection: Best
People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.Collection: Technology
John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships.Collection: Car
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Trust
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.
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists.
When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated.
We must strive to become good ancestors.
A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
Power has to be insecure to be responsive.
For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.
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.
The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.
Once you don't vote your ideals... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.
This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.
The liberal intelligentsia has allowed its party to become a captive of corporate interests.
Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way.
Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.
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.
The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns.
Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked.
No presidential candidate should visit Las Vegas without condemning organized gambling.
Let's not just look at it as taking votes away from Gore. Our support comes from a lot of people.
It is fascinating to watch legislators turn away from their usual corporate grips when they hear the growing thunder of the people.
The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history.
The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders.
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.Collection: Power
If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.Collection: Two
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.Collection: Country
Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it.Collection: Socialism
The Democratic and Republican parties, two apparently distinct political entities feeding at the same corporate trough.Collection: Party
Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Country
Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses…in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to deselect them.Collection: Loss
Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect.Collection: Democracy
We live in a two-party tyranny that doesn't believe in competition, can enforce it with penalties and obstructions, and they're getting closer and closer to being both one corporate party with two heads having different labels.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Real
Things have gotten so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia.Collection: Country
If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you.Collection: Turns
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.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Adversity