Top 100 Hightower Quotes
#1. 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.
Jim Hightower
#3. After our ages-long journey from savagery to civility, let's hope we haven't bought a round-trip ticket.
Cullen Hightower
#4. Courtship brings out the best. Marriage brings out the rest.
Cullen Hightower
#5. The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.
Jim Hightower
#6. Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist.
Jim Hightower
#7. Getting even with somebody is no way to get ahead of anybody.
Cullen Hightower
#8. Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one.
Jim Hightower
#9. Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.
Cullen Hightower
#10. The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.
Jim Hightower
#11. Failure can be bought on easy terms; success must be paid for in advance
Cullen Hightower
#12. Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues
Jim Hightower
#13. The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages.
Jim Hightower
#14. Faith is building on what you know is here, so you can reach what you know is there.
Cullen Hightower
#15. A figment of the imagination is just a harmless illusion - unless you are victim of it.
Cullen Hightower
#16. We all like to see everybody make a profit ... a very little.
Cullen Hightower
#17. Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.
Cullen Hightower
#18. A mind becomes a detriment when it acquires more intelligence than its integrity can handle.
Cullen Hightower
#19. There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they're called humorists.
Cullen Hightower
#20. Every U.S. citizen owes allegiance to our nation. Some Americans consider that anything less than high treason is allegiance.
Cullen Hightower
#21. One difference between savagery and civilization is a little courtesy. There's no telling what a lot of courtesy would do.
Cullen Hightower
#22. 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.
Jim Hightower
#23. 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.
Jim Hightower
#24. Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.
Cullen Hightower
#25. Every adult should be an expert on teenagers, after spending life's seven longest years being one.
Cullen Hightower
#27. The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.
Jim Hightower
#28. This is a matter of public health. The public was sick and tired of DeLay and his corruption.
Jim Hightower
#29. There's always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little - and it's always somebody else.
Cullen Hightower
#30. If we fixed a hangnail the way our government fixes the economy, we'd slam a car door on it.
Cullen Hightower
#31. We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex - but Congress can.
Cullen Hightower
#32. We've got to go to the people with bold ideas and candidates of conviction - we've got to be hotter than high school love.
Jim Hightower
#33. The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
Jim Hightower
#34. The gratification of a thoughtless pleasure soon evaporates; the pleasure of a gratifying thought never ends.
Cullen Hightower
#35. Politics ought to be fun. It shouldn't be just boring meetings.
Jim Hightower
#36. 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.
Jim Hightower
#37. Our ego is our silent partner ... too often with a controlling interest.
Cullen Hightower
#38. Good wages are pro business, since they reduce turnover, increase morale, produce better-skilled employees, and improve productivity.
Jim Hightower
#39. Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.
Jim Hightower
#40. Everyone has something to contribute to this world. It's just a matter of being given that opportunity to do so.
Grace Hightower
#41. Founders v. Bush brings the wisdom and eloquence of the Founding Fathers back to the people, while unmasking the fraudulent PR machine that is corrupting their words and stealing our legacy.
Jim Hightower
#42. In our nation there are two classes of nobility: the law-abiding workers and the law-abiding employers who sustain each other.
Cullen Hightower
#43. 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.
Jim Hightower
#45. When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take from journalism.
Jim Hightower
#46. A stepping-stone can be a stumbling block if we can't see it until after we have tripped over it.
Cullen Hightower
#47. And when Hightower approaches, the smell of plump unwashed flesh and unfresh clothing
that odor of unfastidious sedentation, of static overflesh not often enough bathed
is well nigh overpowering. [ ... ] It is the odor of goodness. Of course it would smell bad to us that are bad and sinful.
William Faulkner
#48. I did everything. I worked at S.S. Kresge, the five-and-dime. I worked in a mailroom. I worked processing insurance claims.
Grace Hightower
#49. You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force.
Jim Hightower
#50. If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.
Jim Hightower
#51. Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building.
Jim Hightower
#52. The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit.
Jim Hightower
#53. Before I started Coffee of Grace, I assumed all coffee came from Latin America or Indonesia. I wasn't familiar with African coffee.
Grace Hightower
#54. When we put our best foot forward, the other one had better be good enough to stand on.
Cullen Hightower
#55. A true measure of your worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.
Cullen Hightower
#56. 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.
Jim Hightower
#58. The only way some of us exercise our minds is by jumping to conclusions..
Cullen Hightower
#59. Of all creatures on earth, we humans have the highest level of stupidity.
Cullen Hightower
#60. 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.
Jim Hightower
#61. Our freedom to discipline ourselves is a freedom we can lose if we don't use it.
Cullen Hightower
#62. 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.
Jim Hightower
#63. Sometimes we deny being worthy of praise, hoping to generate an argument we would be pleased to lose.
Cullen Hightower
#64. Saying what we think gives a wider range of conversation than saying what we know.
Cullen Hightower
#65. A day's pay for a day's work is more than adequate when both the work and the pay are appreciated as much as they are expected.
Cullen Hightower
#66. 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.
Jim Hightower
#68. Our laws can be friendly to those who obey them, and too often useful to those who don't.
Cullen Hightower
#69. The prime of life is that fleeting time between green and over-ripe.
Cullen Hightower
#70. I've got to think of a hundred and sixty million Americans, not of the three or four that happen to be the ones I love. And it wouldn't be a big thing - security is built on lots of little thing. I don't like to talk about it. (Calhoun Hightower in Danger for Breakfast)
John McPartland
#71. I grew up in Kilmichael, Mississippi. It's a dot on the map 100 miles north of Jackson.
Grace Hightower
#72. The wheel was invented so we could move faster. Credit was invented so we would have to.
Cullen Hightower
#73. Lexington is not big enough to have clubs with long lines, but at least they don't have velvet ropes.
Lynn S. Hightower
#74. I'm not the type of person that could take someone else's funds and take a chance with them.
Grace Hightower
#75. When Rick Perry says I can do for America what I've done for Texas, pay attention. That's no idle threat.
Jim Hightower
#76. There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.
Jim Hightower
#77. Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos.
Cullen Hightower
#78. Older generations are living proof that younger generations can survive their lunacy.
Cullen Hightower
#79. I'll give you my routine, my morning ritual: I get up, I do a bit of stretching, and then after showering and everything, I have a half cup of warm lemon water. I've been doing that forever. I love it. It just brightens everything for me.
Grace Hightower
#80. Ser Gerold Hightower had begun his history, and Ser Barristan Selmy had continued it, but the rest Jaime Lannister would need to write for himself. He could write whatever he chose, henceforth.
Whatever he chose ...
George R R Martin
#81. If you don't speak out now when it matters, when would it matter for you to speak out?
Jim Hightower
#83. 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.
Jim Hightower
#84. My vision is to hire qualified employees that may have not yet had the opportunity to create a better life for themselves, or did have one but might have came down on hard times and need a hand.
Grace Hightower
#85. The American way is the way most law-abiding Americans live - in debt. Does this make a balanced budget un-American?
Cullen Hightower
#86. Because Hightower's problem, among other things, is that advertisers would be a lot less interested in his show than in Limbaugh's, even if they have similar ratings, because of what Hightower is saying.
Robert McChesney
#87. Reagan promised everyone a seven-course dinner. Ours turned out to be a possum and a six-pack.
Jim Hightower
#88. 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.
Jim Hightower
#89. 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.
Jim Hightower
#90. Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.
Jim Hightower
#91. 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?
Jim Hightower
#92. It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.
Jim Hightower
#93. 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.'
Jim Hightower
#94. Republicans are so empty-headed, they wouldn't make a good landfill.
Jim Hightower
#96. America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.
Jim Hightower
#97. The Bible declares that on the sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit.
Jim Hightower
#98. When performance exceeds ambition, the overlap is called success.
Cullen Hightower
#99. It may be the rooster that does all the crowing but it's the hen that delivers the goods.
Jim Hightower
#100. When everybody does better, EVERYBODY does better.
Jim Hightower
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top