Ralph Nader Quotes

[E]stablish a public national complaint-handling system using the Internet to help consumers, taxpayers, and workers... It will also be a good way for policy makers to detect patterns. Patterns lead to deterrence...

This is clearly the most dangerous political movement since the Civil War, the GOP under the corporate fascist Trump's thumb. He spread a whole breed of mini-Trumpsters who are getting far too much publicity compared to their opponents. Everything we fought for, for over 50 years, is at stake here...This is an order of magnitude we have never seen before. We have never seen a party literally trying to repress the vote, miscount the vote, purge the vote, intimidate precinct worker volunteers and steal elections. They have actually basically said, 'Any election we lose is because it has been stolen from us.' That is the word of a dictatorship party.

Before and after the American Revolution, there has been a continuing daily tension between contending private commercial pursuits and common civic values. ...[T]he obsessive drive for gold, money, and profit is a formidable deviation from other more important spiritual practices that strive to center community on non-market values... love, generosity, kindness, cooperation, and non-violence.

Democracy requires work. ...The more they feel they've got the members Congress on the run, the more energized they become.

We have 206 law schools in the country. You would think they are the first responders to challenge the criminal injustice system, conditions in the prison, violation of civil rights, crushing consumer rights, and the government being taken over by corporations. It's not happening. It's like they're training technicians... lawyers to serve the powerful interests.

Half of democracy is about just showing up.

To show you how much of a straight-arm the majorities in Congress are giving the people back home. They had a tax bill... for the rich, and the powerful, and the corporate, increasing the deficit, starving the public works investment and all the rest, and they didn't even have public hearings in the committee level, that's unheard of. Then they had five bills to destroy people's rights to have their day in court, if they're wrongfully injured. They got it through the House of Representatives, blocked in the Senate by the Democrats. They didn't even have public hearings in the House Judiciary. Then they tried to get rid of Obamacare, and they lost by one or two votes in the Senate, and they didn't even have public hearings.

Unlike members of Congress, Big Business knew what the WTO agreements contained. That's because corporate lobbyists helped draft them.

They say we have a free press, but we do not. We have a press that is indentured to advertising revenue, and they themselves are now conglomerate corporations... and five big ones control most of the circulation and viewership...

[F]amily functions have been outsourced to business... everything is for sale, and money is power... Our elections and our governments should be... commercial-free zones; our environment, air, and water should never fall under the control of corporations or private owners. Children should not be programmed by a huckstering economy...

Congress... has become a secret tyrannical bastion of Wall Street, and that outrages people...

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

...the Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals...they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse.

Paradoxically, we are in a golden age of books, documentaries, and films that... expose the abuses, crimes and authoritarian essence of corporate commercialism. ...[N]ever ...have they had less impact for change.

[These leaders]... chose higher ethical behavior, declining to avail themselves of the routine excuses about duty to shareholders, competitive riskiness, government regulation or other pretexts most executives employ (...) Each of the CEOs profiled here displayed forthright candor, competence, and a recognition of the complexities of society that shape the bottom line. Most of the CEOs I’ve met ... are afraid to share their views candidly. These twelve spoke out. They endorsed politicians. They spoke out against injustice in a variety of ways, sometimes to their own detriment. They held controversial views. They were not going to leave their conscience at home when they went to work. Part of their vision was to be complete human beings. These CEOs were willing to admit their mistakes in public. They provided a climate of self-correction. This is something most big CEOs never do, under advice of their corporate law firms.(...) The more you look into them, the more they reveal what successful CEOs should be about within the norms and standards of a civilized society.