Ralph Nader Quotes

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

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 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.

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

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

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.

We must strive to become good ancestors.

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

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

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

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

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.

Information is the currency of democracy. It's denial must always be suspect.

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

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.

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.

Your best teacher is your last mistake.

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.

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

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.

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.

There are some people in this world who would never plant a seed because it doesn't produce fruit the first season.

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

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.

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