110+ Ralph Nader Quotes On Advocacy, Reform And Protection

Ralph Nader is an American lawyer, political activist, and author. He first rose to prominence in 1965 with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, an exposé on the automobile industry and its practice of producing unsafe vehicles. Nader is credited with helping to spark the modern consumer movement and has been a vocal critic of corporate power and government negligence. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Ralph Nader on leadership, advocacy, reform.

Top 10 Ralph Nader Quotes

1. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
5. There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
6. The clinical definition of "fascism" is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power.
7. We must strive to become good ancestors.
8. No presidential candidate should visit Las Vegas without condemning organized gambling.
9. If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.
10. Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.

Ralph Nader Image Quotes

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. — Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader Short Quotes

• If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.
• A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.
• Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it.
• Your best teacher is your last mistake.
• Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.
• When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated.
• The only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals.
• Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.
• Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.
• National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

Ralph Nader Quotes About Corporations

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 deselect them. — Ralph Nader

Arbitration is private. It doesn't have the tools to dig into the corporate files. It's usually controlled by arbitrators who want repeat business from corporations not from the injured person. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

The corporations have become our government. They're not just influential. Department by department, you name it, they put their people in high government positions, they have 10,000 PACs and 35,000 lobbyists, so there's no more opening to be heard. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

We live in a two-party tyranny that doesn't believe in competition, can enforce it with penalties and obstructions, and they're getting closer and closer to being both one corporate party with two heads having different labels. — Ralph Nader

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

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. — Ralph Nader

When do corporations begin to lose their credibility? They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought every social justice movement in this country. — Ralph Nader

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

Ralph Nader Quotes About People

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. — Ralph Nader

The lesser of two evils, or the least of the worst, is not good enough for the American people anymore. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced. — Ralph Nader

We're trying to convey how much easier it is than most people think, especially young people, to turn the country around if they focus on the levers, if they focus on Congress, and state legislatures. — Ralph Nader

If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve. — Ralph Nader

Jill Stein, is - and I'll make it in a personal way - over eighty percent of the people when I ran for President knew about me but then I realized that when I was running, eighty percent of the people didn't even know I was running. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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

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. — Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader Famous Quotes And Sayings

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. — Ralph Nader

Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war? — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective. — Ralph Nader

President [ Dwight] Eisenhower warned us, five star general, he said watch out for the military-industrial complex. That's a threat to our freedom, to our economy, and what we have now is a gigantic taxpayer draining empire that is devouring itself, which, as you say, it's creating more resistance, more fighting, against us oversees. — Ralph Nader

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

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. — Ralph Nader

For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull. — Ralph Nader

Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials. — Ralph Nader

I think Hillary Clinton is a militarist. She is a political coward. The interesting thing about Hilary Clinton, like Bill Clinton dodging the draft, he never touched the Pentagon - she is in the same position. — Ralph Nader

Ending police brutality and mass incarceration. There is a growing left-right support for criminal justice reform. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

We have two parties who are basically hijacking our country for their corporate paymasters. And if we focus on 535 members of Congress, that's not all that many, we're going to see a fast turnaround. So focus all your concerns, all the information, the kind of agenda the Green Party has. Turn it right on your Senators and Representatives. — Ralph Nader

There is not enough self-consciousness about what a family can be, about what it can inherit from forbearers, and what new traditions it can start as a contributor to the community. — Ralph Nader

This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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

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

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

The various Social Security privatization schemes, full and partial, would cost both the 'social' - that is the public, cooperative, societal - element of the program and 'security' - the rock-solid income guarantee afforded by the system. It should be rejected. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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 — Ralph Nader

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

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

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

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

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. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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

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. — Ralph Nader

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

Let it not be said by a future, forlorn generation that we wasted and lost our great potential because our despair was so deep we didn't even try, or because each of us thought someone else was worrying about our problems. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

If, during the Second World War, the United States had retooled its factories for manufacturing bicycles instead of munitions, we’d be one of the healthiest, least oil-dependent, and most environmentally-sound constituents in the Nazi empire today. — Ralph Nader

We have an underdeveloped democracy and overdeveloped plutocracy. — Ralph Nader

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

Turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you. — Ralph Nader

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

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

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. — Ralph Nader

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

This administration is not sympathetic to corporations, it is indentured to corporations. — Ralph Nader

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory. — Ralph Nader

The debate corporation is a corporation. It's funded by corporations. It's relayed by media corporations to the public. It's created by the two parties, which are corporations. We should have public presidential debates all over America run by public institutions. — Ralph Nader

The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington and meets with the puppet in the White House. He then goes down Pennsylvania Avenue and meets with the puppets in Congress. The Israeli leader then 'brings back millions of dollars' in aid to Israel. — Ralph Nader

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

Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked. — Ralph Nader

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

Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines. — Ralph Nader

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. — Ralph Nader

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

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

What's happening is that the will of the people, the declared opinion of the people, who want more agendas, more ideas, more sensible redirections reforms in our country, are being thwarted by the mechanism of keeping third-party candidates, who are on more than enough States theoretically to get an electoral vote majority, to keep them off the mass media, the commercial media, to keep them off the debates. — Ralph Nader

Secrecy destroys accountability. — Ralph Nader

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

There are very significant ways around America on how to break its grip, which is, of course, a way to exclude dissenting voices before tens of millions of people. — Ralph Nader

In 2000 the majority of people wanted me and Buchanan on the debates in two thousand. And me on the debates in 2004. have there been any polls? — Ralph Nader

This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out. — Ralph Nader

[Jill Stein] don't have to engage in soundbites here as you may have experienced with some of the mass media. — Ralph Nader

The flow from knowledge to action draws upon the complete person with his or her catalyst and synergistic potential. — Ralph Nader

If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you. — Ralph Nader

One time when I was nine or ten years old, I came home from school...and my dad said to me, 'Well, Ralph, what did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?' So, I'm saying to myself, 'What's the difference between the two?'. — Ralph Nader

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

We've got to get rid of this discrimination, this chilling, this bigotry toward gays and lesbians that are reflected in literally hundreds and hundreds of statutes and regulations in this country. — Ralph Nader

You see that gap is exactly how they can marginalize and exclude people from giving the voters more voices and choices. — Ralph Nader

The progress of history is to take the impossible and turn it into the possible. — Ralph Nader

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

For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people. — Ralph Nader

I think most Americans are ready for waging peace and not just brutalizing our foreign policy which is boomeranging against us. — Ralph Nader

Life Lessons by Ralph Nader

1. Ralph Nader taught us that it is possible to make a difference in the world, no matter how small, by taking action and standing up for what you believe in.
2. He also showed us that it is important to always stay true to yourself and your values, even when it is difficult or unpopular.
3. Lastly, he demonstrated that it is possible to make a positive impact in the world through hard work, dedication, and perseverance.