Jim Hightower Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

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

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

It's hard to believe President George Bush gave a speech in New Orleans about disaster recovery and failed to mention the word 'farm' or the word 'rural.'

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 have to learn to read between the lies.

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?

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

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

The good news, though, is that I find in my political travels that people, as regular citizens, are more interested than ever in getting together and having discussions. They want to hear about other viewpoints that differ entirely from what the administration is putting out.

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.

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

Bush and the corporate kleptocrats have stomped on too many people and left too many people out of the system, and those people are now in rebellion. It's not just poor people they are holding down but the middle class, as well. I have a favorite bumper sticker I saw on a pickup truck last year in Austin. It said, "Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand basket?"

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Well, I've been in the political arena all of my life, and 10 years of that as a candidate and elected official, and that's about enough.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Ronald Reagan's idea of a good farm program was Hee Haw.

Republicans are so empty-headed, they wouldn't make a good landfill.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

This is a matter of public health. The public was sick and tired of DeLay and his corruption.

Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist.

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

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

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.

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

There's enormous progressive activism and, more often than not, success at the grassroots level - everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.

It's an essential fight librarians are making, an age-old fight; yours is a battle for civilization. It's a fight for our country's founding values.