Jim Hightower Quotes

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages.

Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one.

Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.

Like NASCAR race drivers or PGA golfers, why not require each of the [US presidential] candidates to cover their clothing, briefcases and staff with the logo patches of their corporate sponsors?

Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.

The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.

If you don't speak out when it matters, when would it matter to speak out?

Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.

The original Greek word "idiotes" referred to people who might have had a high IQ, but were so self-involved that they focused exclusively on their own life and were both ignorant of and uncaring about public concerns and the common good.

It may be the rooster that does all the crowing but it's the hen that delivers the goods.

Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.

Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building.

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out.

Most people have a sense that things have gone terribly wrong. It's not just some giveaways to the rich and the rigging of regulatory rules. It's something fundamental. The very idea of America is being stolen, and people are sensing that with a tremor within their hearts. They are taking away this core notion of the common good, this idea that we are all in it together. They are diverting America from our historic striving towards egalitarianism, which is why America exists. It's the thing that makes us unique in history. That's what people are sensing. We are going down the wrong path.

When everybody does better, EVERYBODY does better.

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.

Good wages are pro business, since they reduce turnover, increase morale, produce better-skilled employees, and improve productivity.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

When Rick Perry says I can do for America what I've done for Texas, pay attention. That's no idle threat.

Reagan promised everyone a seven-course dinner. Ours turned out to be a possum and a six-pack.