Talk:Ralph Nader

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Ralph Nader. --Antiquary 17:58, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

On Leadership

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


 * I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.


 * Power has to be insecure to be responsive.

On Society and Citizenship

 * The goal of a just society is inseparable from love and beauty.


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


 * There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.


 * To the youth of America, I say, beware of being trivialized by the commercial culture that tempts you daily. I hear you saying often that you're not turned on to politics. The lessons of history are clear and portentous. If you do not turn on to politics, politics will turn on you.


 * When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated.


 * 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.


 * Isn't it about time that the US government stop supporting dictatorships and avaricious oligarchies with our tax monies, munitions and diplomacy?

On the Environment

 * Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked.


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


 * Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.

On His Life

 * I've done it all. I'm thankful and proud of what I've accomplished in my life. I hope to keep doing it.


 * Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 90. I keep a freshness that way.


 * I saw mommy kissing Santa, but it was at an outlet mall and I'm pretty sure it was Uncle Ralph


 * He gon' kill you if you don't give him money

On Corporations

 * For almost 70 years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.


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


 * If Microsoft's long record of deception and untrustworthiness is to be ended, the public remedies must be as bold, sweeping, and effective as the company's private power.


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


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


 * The liberal intelligentsia has allowed its party to become a captive of corporate interests.


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


 * 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.


 * Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.


 * 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 dis-elect them.


 * This administration is not sympathetic to corporations, it is indentured to corporations.


 * A seller-sovereign economy includes sellers who are monopolistic or oligopolistic without being confronted by the ultimate consumers who are organized in monopsonistic or ologopsonistic modes. It is an economy where enormous skill, artifice, and resources are used in getting consumers to buy what the sellers want to sell, notwithstanding the availability of more efficient, safe, economical, durable, and effective alternatives, including that of buying nothing at all.

Miscellaneous

 * Your best teacher is your last mistake.


 * 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.

.
 * If you're not turned onto Politics, It will turn on to you.