Ralph Nader Quotes

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

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.

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

The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.

To top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.

Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way.

People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.

John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships.

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.

If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists.

Nothing can stop the power of an informed citizenry when it is empowered, organized, and motivated.

It is fascinating to watch legislators turn away from their usual corporate grips when they hear the growing thunder of the people.

Both [Donald] Trump and Hillary [Clinton] want bigger military budgets and Hillary supports President Obama's one trillion dollar expenditure to so-called upgrade nuclear weapons. P

Hillary Clinton's ready to pivot to Asia and provoke China. So are the Republicans. It's on domestic issues that there will be a gridlock.

It was an injured worker finding a lawyer on a contingent fee in a little town in Texas that blew the top off one of the greatest industrial disasters in American history.

If you're kept off the debates, you can't reach more two percent of people even if you campaign every state and fill the big conventions like Madison Square Garden.

[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.

The whole story of human history is: The blasphemy of today is the commonplace of tomorrow.

The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns.

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.

This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.

We have an underdeveloped democracy and overdeveloped plutocracy.

Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism.

General Motors could buy Delaware if DuPont were willing to sell it.

Members of Congress are like the voters in one respect -- they want to go with the winners.

Secrecy destroys accountability.

We should tax things we don't like. We should tax pollution ... And we should lighten the taxes on things we do like, like honest labor, like food.

The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create more leaders.

Democrats have become very good at electing very bad Republicans

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory.

That's why I call the Senate the graveyard of democracy, because even when you have 58 senators, they can block it and block it and block it.

The concept of individual with a conscience is one whose highest allegiance is to his fellow man.

The food industry, its trade associations, and research foundations, is well financed and highly organized to pressure the FDA.

Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations.

Hillary Clinton's ready to pick a fight with Putin. So are the Republicans.

I think we should make a closer link between domestic policy and an interventionist militaristic foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton is going to find common ground with the Republicans on foreign and military affairs. They both want to enhance the military budget.

It is basically a strategy to destroy the essence of democracy, which is the competitiveness and choices of candidates on the ballot.

Militaristic foreign policy is destroying America.

When I go up there, I see coal lobbyists, oil lobbyists, natural gas lobbyists, nuclear power lobbyists, somehow they think that's where the action is in Congress.

Hillary Clinton's never seen a weapons system or a war she hasn't liked.

As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty.

Justice needs money; it always has . . . whether for abolition of slavery and early women's rights movements or the civil rights and environmental drives of our generation.

The world is shaped by different people with certain personalities that come out of different upbringings.

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

The 60th seed at Wimbledon gets a chance at Center Court. The 60th seed in the NCAA gets a chance to go to the Final Four. But the third seed [in presidential politics] is shut out.

If you're not turned on by politics, politics will turn on you.

Families are incubators for citizen activists.

Congress is the most powerful branch. It can expand a progressive society, or it can block a progressive society.

Gates's net wealth is greater than the combined net worth of the poorest 40% of Americans (112,000,000 people).