Ralph Nader Quotes

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

Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value.

Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally. . . . Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Let's get that story out. . . . Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders.

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

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.

Business of blurring is fantastic. They both are playing the politics of avoidance. They avoid all the issues on corporate power, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, so on and so forth. They avoid all those. That's the politics of avoidance. All the major issues that are so much on people's minds - health care, living wage, public works, jobs - they avoid.

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.

As I was saying, half a democracy is showing up and people have got not only to agree with this agenda, some of these third parties listeners, they've got to show up.

A citizenship of wholesale delegation and abdication to public and private power systems, such as prevails now, makes such periodic checks as elections little more than rituals.

The financial wealth of the top 1 percent of households in the U.S. exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent.

Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.

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

I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does.

Let's look at the Trump and Bernie Sanders insurgencies. They were basically insurgencies against the Republican and Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders made no mistake about it. And, of course, Trump didn't either. And they almost won.

Let's run through the various ways they're trying to marginalize the Green Party and even the Libertarian Party. One way is to keep you off the mass media.

I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations.

You [Jill Stein] want to do something about student debt. And that affects conservative and liberal students. That's going to be a majoritarian position.

Power has to be insecure to be responsive.

It's not a cost of doing business when the corporation executives go to jail, and that's why they fight so hard to make sure the prosecutors' budget are very limited and that the campaign cash-greased lawmakers keep defending them against being held accountable.

People are interested in family traditions, and I think a lot of families can benefit from some of the ways that my parents dealt with the challenges of raising four kids.

In 2004 Professor Stephen Farnsworth, when I report saying that I got about five minutes on all the networks after Labor Day to election day: only five minutes even though I, like you, were representing majoritarian issues.

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

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

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.

You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less.

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

Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.

I can say that you [Jill Sander] are my successor on the Green Party ticket so I know a little bit about what you're going through and I'm sure listeners are eager to hear you out.

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

A wasteful defense is a weak defense.

The corporations don't like open courts of law, trials by jury. They want to privatize by pushing people into compulsory arbitration where they win most of the time and the whole process is pretty secret.

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

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.

The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.

In the meantime the big corporations are fleeing America for tax havens and places like Ireland, Luxembourg and the Grand Cayman Islands; the rich are finding more tax loopholes to expect; so when are the people going to basically roll up their sleeves and say, we've had enough, we're going to recapture Congress.

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.

The reason that democracies always defeat dictatorships is because they're open to debate. We should never allow Washington to say, 'Shut up, get in line and wave the flag.'

Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation.

I once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.'

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.

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

The corporations are worried about their reputational damage and a lot of the social media inflicts that, but it's hard to measure it.

She was the light of our lives, our anchor, compass and vision.

Now unless you have billions of dollars, it's impossible to reach tens of millions of American people no matter how hard you campaign.

The threats are coming to this country, which will, of course, increase the massive industry known as the anti-terrorism industry, and crush our civil liberties and civil rights, And it's devouring our priorities here in communities all over the country which are in such disrepair and are so neglected in terms of public works and public services.

The central challenge for any company, regardless of its size, is to keep doing a better job for its customers.

Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country...But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.