Jim Hightower Quotes - Page 2

The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit.

Populism is at its essence just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.

The [Democratic] party is a bank. It collects money and gives it to TV stations.

If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even dicier to listen.

America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.

America's drug war is so stupid that if you pay close attention to just how stupid it is -- it'll drive you to use drugs.

The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.

What's new is that the White House itself has now been corporatized. It's not politicians working for the corporate interests. They are the corporate interests. That's where Bush came from, and Cheney and Rumsfeld.

The media isn't only asleep; it doesn't want to know this news, that the people are revolting, in the very best sense of the term, revolting against the thieves in high places and reaching out to each other, which is our great strength.

Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate excesses.

Populism is not a style, it's a people's rebellion against the iron grip that big corporations have on our country - including our economy, government, media, and environment.

Part of the failure of the corporate media is that they don't dig out stories anymore. They are looking down from the top floors. Media work used to be something that was down on the ground level. Now they are looking out of the windows in the top suites, and they don't know what's going on out there. And then there are the corporate owners who don't want this stuff reported because if one town learns that the next town has defeated Wal-Mart or stopped sweatshop goods, then other towns are going to want to do the same thing.

Even a little dog can piss on a big building.

It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.

Little ol' boy in the Panhandle told me the other day you can still make a small fortune in agriculture. Problem is, you got to start with a large one.

We've got to go to the people with bold ideas and candidates of conviction - we've got to be hotter than high school love.

But the good news is that out in the countryside, just about every place that's got a zip code has somebody or some group of people battling the economic and political exclusion that Wall Street and Washington are shoving down our throats.

Banks don't commit crimes. Bankers do. And they won't ever stop if they don't have to pay for their crimes.

The Bible declares that on the sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit.

Politics ought to be fun. It shouldn't be just boring meetings.

The media isn't only asleep; it doesn't want to know the news, that the people are revolting, in the very best sense of the term, revolting against the thieves in high places and reaching out to each other, which is our great strength. When you can draw that many people, you've got something going. You don't have to worry if the guys in suits are going to put it on the front page or not.

Some of these rich folks seem to think that everything belongs to them and they'll even get to take it with them when they die. But you know what? You don't ever see a hearse pulling a U Haul.

You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force.

But, as my mother used to tell me, two wrongs don't make a right. But I soon figured out that three left turns do.

When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take from journalism.